August didn't remember walking home.
One minute he was pressed against the wall in that dead-end hallway, staring at words that shouldn't exist. The next, he was standing in his room. Door shut. Backpack dropped. Hoodie still damp with sweat that had soaked through during his escape from school.
The walk home was just gone. Like someone had cut it from the film reel of his day.
He locked his bedroom door. Tested the handle twice. He didn't know what he was keeping out (or keeping in), but the click of the lock felt necessary. Like a ritual that might help.
Everything looked normal. Bed unmade from this morning. Desk chair tilted at its usual angle. Yesterday's jeans crumpled on the floor. The jasmine candle his mom bought him sat unlit on the windowsill, wax pooling at the bottom.
Normal. Safe. Real.
But the air felt wrong.
Thick. Like breathing through gauze. Like the space between sleep and waking when you can't tell which side you're on. The walls seemed to pulse (so slightly he might have imagined it). In and out. Like the room itself was breathing.
He set the sketchbook on his desk. Stared at it.
It stared back.
Finally, hands shaking, he opened it.
Arthur's page was gone.
Not blank. Not erased. Gone. Like someone had surgically removed it from the binding without leaving a trace. The pages went from Chapter 9 to nothing, no ragged edge where paper should have been torn.
August flipped through frantically. No Arthur. No kneeling figure. No spreading cracks. No watching silhouette. Just pristine white pages that had never known pencil.
"No, no, no…" His fingers fumbled through the pages again. Same result. Arthur had vanished.
Then he reached the last page.
And stopped breathing.
A new drawing waited there. Complete. Detailed. Perfect in ways his twelve-year-old hands could never have managed.
Arthur stood in three-quarter view, no longer kneeling. His sword hung across his back in a worn leather sheath. His coat (the one August had spent hours designing) moved like real fabric caught in wind. His head was turned slightly, like someone off-page had called his name.
But his eyes looked tired. Old. Like they'd seen too much empty time.
The detail was impossible. Every fold of clothing. Every strand of hair. The wear patterns on his boots. The way his hand rested on his sword hilt (not threatening, just ready). This wasn't a drawing. This was a photograph of someone who'd never existed.
Beneath the image, in handwriting that wasn't his (elegant where his was messy, confident where his was uncertain), words waited:
"If you're going to bring me back, do it properly this time."
August sat down hard, legs giving out. The chair creaked under his weight.
"You're not real," he said to the empty room. To the drawing. To himself.
The pencil lines shimmered. Just for a second. Like graphite catching light that wasn't there.
He grabbed a pencil (his pencil, the one with the chewed eraser) and flipped to a fresh page. His hand hovered over the paper.
"Okay," he whispered. "Let's see if I'm really losing it."
He started sketching.
Arthur again. But different. Not copying the mysterious drawing or trying to recreate his old work. This was new. This was now. Arthur standing with his coat billowing, sword half-drawn, face turned toward something August couldn't see yet. Eyes that held questions instead of answers.
The pencil moved like it had its own ideas. Lines flowed without his usual hesitation. Shadows placed themselves. Details emerged he hadn't planned: a scar on Arthur's jaw, wear marks on his gloves, something in his expression that went beyond what August thought he was drawing.
Then, halfway through, Arthur's head turned.
On the page. While August watched. The figure shifted, eyes moving from their fixed point to look directly at him.
The pencil fell from nerveless fingers.
The drawing was still moving. Subtle. Breathing motions. The coat settling. Eyes tracking something.
Eyes tracking him.
New words appeared below, written in that same elegant hand:
"You remember me better than I thought."
August shoved back from the desk so hard his chair hit the wall.
That night, sleep was a joke his body didn't get.
He lay in bed, lights off, blanket pulled to his chin like childhood armor against monsters. The sketchbook sat closed on his desk, but he could feel it there. A weight in the corner of his vision. A presence that made the darkness feel occupied.
Every time his eyes started to close, he saw Arthur.
Not as a drawing. Not as lines on paper. As a person.
Standing in white space that wasn't quite dream and wasn't quite memory. Sword on his back catching light that had no source. Head tilted like he was listening for something specific.
Listening for August.
The worst part was how real it felt. Not dream-real with its fuzzy edges and dissolving logic. Real-real. Like August was glimpsing something that existed whether he was looking or not.
At 3 AM, he gave up. Turned on his desk lamp. Opened the sketchbook.
Arthur's drawing had changed again. Still the same pose, but the background was filling in. Faint lines suggesting architecture. Broken towers. A sky that looked heavy. A world half-remembered.
August picked up his pencil. Put it down. Picked it up again.
Finally wrote: "Are you real?"
The answer came immediately, appearing as he watched:
"I'm as real as you made me."
"That's not an answer."
"Isn't it?"
August stared at the page until the words blurred. Then added:
"What do you want?"
This time the pause was longer. When words finally appeared, they came slowly:
"To finish what you started. To exist beyond the edges you drew. To stop waiting in the dark for a story that never ends."
"How?"
"Let me show you."
Morning came gray and wrong. August hadn't slept, hadn't moved, had barely blinked. He sat at his desk still wearing yesterday's clothes, sketchbook open, surrounded by eraser shavings and broken pencil leads.
He'd drawn all night. Or been drawn through. He wasn't sure which anymore.
Pages and pages of Arthur. Different angles. Different moments. Some he remembered starting. Others seemed to have appeared while his attention drifted. All of them more detailed than anything he'd ever managed before.
And all of them watched him back.
When his mom knocked, he almost jumped out of his skin.
"August? You feeling okay, baby?"
He looked at himself in the reflection of his black phone screen. Pale. Eyes red. Hands stained with graphite.
"I'm sick. I think. Stomach thing."
"You need me to stay home?"
"No." Too fast. "No, I'm okay. Just tired."
A pause. He could feel her worry through the door.
"There's soup in the fridge. Call if you need anything."
"Thanks, Mom."
Her footsteps retreated. The house settled into empty quiet.
August looked back at the sketchbook. At the dozens of Arthurs looking back. At the world building itself around them, detail by detail, without his conscious input.
"It's starting," he whispered, echoing words that weren't his.
He didn't go to school. Didn't text Alex back. Didn't eat the soup.
He just sat. And watched. And waited.
Because he could feel it now. The thinness. The place where his world touched something else. Like standing at the edge of deep water and feeling the current tug at your ankles.
Something was coming through.
It happened just after what would have been lunch.
August had finally moved to the couch, wrapped in a blanket like armor, sketchbook balanced on his knees. He'd been staring at the same page for an hour: Arthur mid-stride, approaching something outside the frame.
His eyes burned. His head felt stuffed with static. The headache from yesterday had evolved into something else. Not pain. Pressure. Like his skull was too small for whatever was trying to fit inside.
He closed his eyes. Just for a second. Just to rest.
And saw him.
Not on paper. Not in his mind.
There.
Standing by the bookshelf in the living room. Flickering like bad reception. Like reality couldn't quite hold his edges.
Arthur. Full height. Solid and not-solid. His coat moving in wind that didn't exist. His eyes (tired, patient, real) fixed on August.
He didn't speak. Didn't move. Just stood there for one impossible second.
Then gone. Like a channel changing. Like August had blinked him away.
August didn't scream. Couldn't. His throat had forgotten how to work. He sat frozen, blanket clutched in white-knuckled hands, staring at the space where impossible had just happened.
Slowly, carefully (like sudden movements might break something), he opened the sketchbook.
New page. New words. That elegant handwriting that wasn't his:
"It's starting."
And below, in shakier letters:
"You let the story remember itself."
August's hand trembled as he picked up his pencil. He wasn't asking if anymore. Wasn't trying to logic his way out. The only question left was:
"Why me?"
The answer came slowly. Each word appearing like it hurt:
"Because you were the only one who ever listened."
"Because you gave me a voice when I had none."
"Because when you were twelve and breaking, you reached for me."
"And I reached back."
August read the words three times. Four. Until they burned into his brain.
Then he wrote: "I didn't know."
"I know."
"But you're here now."
Something shifted in the room. Not visually. Deeper. Like gravity had tilted two degrees left. August gripped the sketchbook tighter.
"What happens next?"
But before the answer could come (before the pencil could form words he didn't write), everything stopped.
Not paused. Stopped. The clock on the wall froze mid-tick. Dust motes hung in the air like stars. The world held its breath.
And August was elsewhere.
Not his living room. Not dreaming. Not imagining.
Standing on black soil under a sky that had forgotten what color meant.
The ground was wrong. Too soft. Too dark. Like ash compressed into earth. The horizon stretched forever in all directions, flat and empty and somehow watching.
No sun. No moon. No stars. Just gray light that came from nowhere and cast no shadows.
August turned slowly, his breath misting in air that wasn't cold.
Behind him: ruins. Tower fragments jutting from the ground like broken teeth. Walls that ended in nothing. Architecture that followed dream-logic (stairs that climbed to nowhere, doors that opened onto themselves).
And there, at the edge of it all, Arthur.
Not flickering. Not uncertain. As solid as the ground beneath August's feet.
He stood with his back to August, staring at something in the distance. His coat moved in the not-wind. His hand rested on his sword hilt. Real. Present. There.
August tried to speak. His voice came out whisper-thin: "Arthur?"
Arthur turned. Slowly. Like he had all the time in the world (because time meant nothing here).
His face was exactly as August had drawn him. Had imagined him. Had needed him to be. But his eyes held twelve years of waiting.
"You're not supposed to be here yet," Arthur said. His voice didn't echo, but it felt like it should. Like the emptiness around them was swallowing sound.
"I didn't mean to, I don't know how…"
"You're getting too close. The boundaries are thinning." Arthur studied him with those patient, tired eyes. "You need to be careful."
August took a step forward. The ground made no sound. "What is this place?"
Arthur's expression didn't change, but something in it deepened. "You called it the Ashlands once. Gave it history. Battles. Loss. A kingdom that fell to something it couldn't name." He gestured at the ruins. "Then you abandoned it mid-sentence."
"I was thirteen."
"I know." No accusation. Just fact. "But the story kept going without you. Empty. Repeating. Waiting for an ending that never came."
The not-wind picked up. August shivered despite the lack of cold.
"Why are you showing me this?"
Arthur turned back toward the horizon. "Because something else woke up when you remembered me."
"What do you mean?"
"You never named it. The thing that destroyed this place. The shadow in every scene. The reason I fought. The reason I failed." His voice dropped. "But you drew it anyway. Gave it hunger. Gave it purpose. Then left it here with me."
August's chest tightened. "I don't understand."
Behind him. Movement.
He turned (too slow) and saw it.
A figure in the gray distance. Tall. Wrong. Its edges didn't hold steady, like reality kept trying to erase it and failing. It didn't walk. It drifted. Pulled itself forward by will alone.
And it was looking at them.
At him.
August couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Every instinct screamed run, but his legs wouldn't work.
"What is that?"
Arthur's voice was steady. Resigned. "What you were too afraid to finish drawing."
The thing moved closer. Not fast. Patient. Like it had been waiting twelve years (and could wait twelve more).
"We need to go," Arthur said quietly. "You're not ready. The story isn't ready."
"Ready for what?"
The thing in the distance opened what might have been a mouth. No sound came out, but August felt it in his bones. A vibration. A hunger.
A recognition.
"August." Arthur's hand was on his shoulder suddenly. Solid. Real. Warm. "Wake up."
"I'm not asleep."
"Wake up."
The world shattered.
August gasped, falling backward off the couch. He hit the floor hard, elbow cracking against hardwood. The pain was sharp, real, grounding.
He was home. Living room. Afternoon light through windows. Clock ticking. World moving.
But the sketchbook had fallen open beside him.
And on the page was a new drawing. The Ashlands. The ruins. Arthur in perfect detail.
And in the corner, sketched in his own hand (without his memory of doing it), the shadow. The hungry thing. The unfinished ending.
Watching him through the page.
Waiting.