August told himself he was fine.
Again.
He even said it out loud while brushing his teeth:
"I'm fine. This is fine. I'm just sleep-deprived and possibly hallucinating but also definitely hydrated."
The mirror didn't argue.
The lights didn't flicker.
Nothing moved in the corners.
Which almost made it worse.
Because silence now? Felt like bait.
Tuesday morning came with sunlight that felt too bright. Too normal. Like the universe was gaslighting him into thinking Monday hadn't happened. His mom made pancakes (suspicious). Reece didn't steal his phone charger (very suspicious). Even the shower water stayed the right temperature the whole time.
August sat at the kitchen table, stabbing pancakes with his fork, waiting for something to go wrong.
"You're quiet," his mom said.
"Just thinking."
"About?"
"Whether reality is subjective or if I'm just losing it."
She laughed. "Philosophy before 8 AM? You really are my kid."
He forced a smile. Ate the pancakes. They tasted like pancakes. Not pencil shavings. Not ink. Just flour and syrup and normal.
Too normal.
Still, he made himself laugh.
A real one, too. Had to. If he didn't laugh, he'd probably scream.
That afternoon, he skipped last period (sorry, Mr. Henderson, but calculus couldn't compete with existential dread) and went home early. The house was empty. Perfect.
He cracked open the sketchbook, sitting on the carpet with a blanket over his shoulders like a burrito of denial. The page was already open to Chapter 10. The death scene.
He'd read it a dozen times. Maybe more.
But this time, he read it like someone flipping through their old DeviantArt account. Fully expecting to cringe at his thirteen-year-old self's attempt at tragedy.
And at first, he did.
"His eyes were the color of sorrow that forgot how to cry."
"Okay, Shakespeare," he muttered. "Calm down."
He kept reading.
"Each breath was a thread unraveling."
"Oh my god," he whispered. "I was trying so hard."
He laughed again. Genuinely this time. Because thirteen-year-old him really thought he was doing something with these metaphors. Really thought he was capturing the essence of loss or whatever.
Then he reached the middle.
And the sentence that had always been there:
"He didn't scream when the blade went in. Just looked at me."
He froze.
Wait.
Me?
That wasn't there before.
He flipped back through his memory. Through all the times he'd read this scene. It was always third person. Always distant. Always "he looked at nothing" or "he looked at the sky."
Never at me.
He checked the margins. Compared it to the mental draft in his head.
There was no version where Arthur looked at anyone. Let alone him.
He looked back at the sentence.
Now it was underlined.
Now darker.
Now… true.
"He didn't scream when the blade went in. Just looked at me."
August whispered, "That's not right."
And his hands started shaking.
Because something came back.
Not the story.
The memory.
He wasn't writing it like fiction.
He was describing something he saw.
He had written Arthur's death like someone writing a police report. Like someone who was there. Who watched. Who…
And the next line was even worse.
"He knew I'd do it again."
August dropped the book.
Hard.
But it stayed open. Pages fluttering once, then settling. Still. Waiting.
The letters began to shift. Slowly, like they were melting and reforming. The ink warped. A new sentence formed at the bottom.
Not part of the story.
Part of now.
"Then why are you laughing?"
The room dimmed.
Not gradually. Like someone flipped a switch.
The power cut.
And in the pitch black, he heard it.
Breathing.
Low.
Behind him.
Not his.
He didn't move for nearly a minute. Couldn't. His body had forgotten how to work. Just sat there, blanket still around his shoulders, listening to something breathe in his empty house.
The power was out. The silence pressed on his chest like a weight. The sketchbook lay open, and somehow, even in the dark, he could see the pages. Faintly glowing. Like they had their own light source.
August couldn't breathe right.
That sentence.
"He knew I'd do it again."
It wasn't metaphor.
It wasn't fiction.
It was confession.
He whispered, "No, no, I didn't write that…"
But he did.
Somewhere in him, he did.
Because now the memory was coming back. Not like nostalgia. Like a bruise pressed too hard. Like something that had been sleeping under scar tissue and was finally waking up.
He was younger. Twelve. Maybe thirteen.
Sitting at the kitchen table. Late at night. Everyone asleep.
He remembered the scene. Not drawing it, but feeling it.
Arthur wasn't just dying in his mind.
Arthur was looking at him.
Through the page. Through the pencil. Through whatever wall separated fiction from whatever this was.
August hadn't written the death from the outside.
He'd written it from the inside.
From the one who held the sword.
Arthur didn't resist. He knelt. He didn't beg. He looked up. At August. And waited.
Like he knew what was coming.
Like he accepted it.
Like he forgave it before it even happened.
August hadn't just killed Arthur.
He had chosen to.
He had murdered his own creation with full intent. With purpose. With something that felt too much like relief.
He didn't remember why.
Not yet.
But the truth settled over him like ice water in his veins:
Chapter 10 wasn't written in sorrow.
It was written in control.
It was written to end something before it began.
The lights flickered back on. Weak. Struggling. Like they weren't sure they wanted to work.
August opened the sketchbook with shaking hands.
The page was fully changed now.
A new image had bled through. Not drawn. Developed. Like a photograph rising from chemical bath.
Arthur kneeling.
Not wounded.
Not yet.
But eyes locked on someone above him. Waiting. Patient. Almost… understanding.
And in the corner, just faintly sketched (like a memory that didn't want to be remembered) was August's hand.
Gripping something.
A blade. Not a sword. Something smaller. More personal. A knife maybe. Or a pencil sharpened to a point.
His blade.
He had drawn himself into the memory.
And beneath it, new words, written not in Arthur's elegant script, but his own handwriting from five years ago. Childish, uneven, emotional:
"I had to."
He stared.
And the sketchbook responded.
Another voice. Sharper. Slower. Someone else.
Not Arthur.
Not the blurred figure.
But something in between. Something that had been watching the whole time.
"No one ever has to kill their own creation."
"You chose to."
"Because you were afraid."
August stood up so fast his legs tangled in the blanket. He stumbled, caught himself on the desk. His chest heaved. He felt sick. Actually sick. Like his body was trying to reject the memory.
"I didn't mean it," he whispered to the empty room.
But the notebook bled new lines.
"Intent doesn't undo action."
"You killed him because you were scared of what he would become."
"Of what you would become through him."
"And now?"
The light flickered again. Stronger this time. Then steady.
Arthur stood in the doorway.
Fully there. Fully real. Not flickering. Not transparent. As solid as the door frame he leaned against.
Eyes tired.
Expression unreadable.
Not angry. Not accusing. Just… present.
August took one step back. His heel hit the wall.
Arthur didn't move.
He just looked at August. Really looked. The way you look at someone who hurt you but you understand why.
And said:
"This time, you don't get to decide what I become."
The words hung in the air like smoke. Heavy. Real. Undeniable.
Arthur didn't blink. Didn't speak again. He just watched August. Like a man standing in the house where he died. Like a ghost who wasn't interested in haunting, just in being seen.
August's breath shook in his chest. His body wanted to run (where?), to scream (at what?), to do something. But something about Arthur's presence pinned him in place. Not with fear.
With weight.
With the gravity of what he'd done.
August finally whispered, "Why now?"
Arthur's voice was quieter this time. Not angry. Not cold. Just tired. So deeply tired.
"Because this was the page you left me on."
August's vision blurred. Tears or something else, he didn't know.
He'd drawn Arthur's death not as an ending. Not as tragedy. But as a lock. A door sealed tight. A containment.
He thought it would stop the story from growing beyond him. From turning into something he couldn't control. Because even at thirteen, even drowning in his own mess, he knew…
Arthur was starting to feel real.
Too real.
Realer than August felt most days.
And that scared him. Scared him enough to take a pencil and end it. To write a death so final, so absolute, that nothing could grow from it.
He hadn't just killed a character.
He had buried something alive.
Arthur stepped forward. One step. Slow. Heavy. Real.
"I waited in silence," he said. "In the dark you made. While you forgot me. While the world forgot the rules you wrote. While the rest of it…"
He paused.
August's chest tightened. "The rest of what?"
Arthur looked him dead in the eye.
"The story didn't die with me."
August swallowed. His throat felt like sandpaper.
"No," Arthur continued, stepping closer, "you ended me. But you left the door open."
"What door? I ended it. I ended everything."
"You ended me." Arthur's voice was patient. Teaching. "But stories don't end just because you stop writing. They wait. They grow in the dark. They find other ways."
The hum returned.
Low.
Not in the walls anymore.
In the air. In the space between seconds. In the pause between heartbeats.
And August remembered.
He hadn't just written a death.
He'd written an exchange.
The end of Arthur was also the release of something else. Something buried, unnamed, formless. He hadn't finished Chapter 10 because it wasn't just Arthur's goodbye.
It was the story's awakening.
It was the thing that had been chasing Arthur finally catching up.
He looked to the desk.
The sketchbook was open again.
New page.
No drawings.
Just one sentence, burned into the paper like a brand:
"You can't keep both of us."
August turned to Arthur.
But Arthur wasn't looking at him anymore.
He was looking at the corner of the room.
At the shadow that shouldn't be moving.
But was.
Not a shape. Not a blur.
A thing.
Unfolding. Stretching. Waking up after five years of patient sleep.
And August knew, without needing it explained:
It had waited in the silence between sentences. Fed on the unfinished. Grown strong on abandoned stories and buried fears.
And now that Arthur was back?
So was it.
The shadow twisted. Reached. Not toward August.
Toward Arthur.
Like it was saying hello to an old friend.
Like it was saying "welcome home."
Like it was saying "this time, he can't save you."
Arthur's hand went to where his sword should be.
But he'd come back empty.
Because August had drawn him that way.
Defenseless.
"August," Arthur said quietly, not looking away from the shadow. "You need to choose."
"Choose what?"
"What kind of story this becomes."
The shadow laughed. Not a sound. A feeling. Cold and patient and hungry.
August's phone buzzed. A text from Alex:
"you good? you left calc looking like you saw a ghost"
He almost laughed. Almost texted back "yeah actually, I did, and also I think I murdered him when I was twelve and now something worse is here."
Instead, he typed:
"yeah. just remembered something I forgot to do"
Which wasn't a lie.
He had forgotten.
Forgotten why he'd really ended Arthur's story.
Not because he was sad.
Not because he was hurting.
Because Arthur had been trying to warn him about something.
And thirteen-year-old August had been too scared to listen.
So he'd killed the messenger.
And left the message undelivered.
Until now.