At first, it felt like a miracle.
Every morning, our little bookshop was swarmed with readers—some wide-eyed children, others wrinkled elders with walking sticks, each holding coins tightly in their hands. They came not for swords, not for spells, but for a story about a fish that became a dragon.
By the second month, we were printing thirty copies a week.
By the third, we couldn't keep up at all.
My father had aged years in weeks. His fingers were stained with ink, his voice often hoarse from dealing with customers, suppliers, and the constant ringing of the little bell above our door. My mother's hands were callused from stitching spines. Even Lina stopped drawing fish in the margins—too busy folding, sorting, tying, stacking.
We'd reached our limit.
One evening, as my father sat in the corner wiping sweat from his brow, he sighed, "We can't do this alone anymore."
The next day, he packed a bundle of freshly printed pages and rode into the nearby town of Brambleford, where a modest printing center stood near the trading square. The owner, a gruff but fair man named Heger, agreed to take a contract.
Within days, two more centers had joined in—one in Brambleford and another in Willowden. We sent manuscripts by courier, and they printed, bound, and shipped back stacks of books twice as fast.
Yet it still wasn't enough.
Letters began to arrive.
Dozens.
Dozens turned to hundreds.
Booksellers from surrounding towns—Evershade, Greystone, Highbell—wrote asking to purchase copies in bulk. Some offered coin in advance. Others offered contracts to distribute under their store names. One even sent a silver coin wrapped in velvet as a "token of interest."
And then came the crest-sealed envelope.
Thick, cream-colored parchment. Gold-embossed script. The emblem of an ink quill coiled around a laurel leaf.
The Writers' Guild.
The official Writers' Guild of the Southern Provinces.
My father opened it at the dinner table.
"Dear Mr. Ethan Verne," he read slowly, "it has come to our attention that a work titled The Sky Beneath the Water, written by your hand, has achieved significant acclaim across multiple districts under independent circulation…"
I held my breath.
"…we hereby extend formal interest in acquiring regional distribution rights under Guild protection, recognition, and backing."
The letter ended with a simple line:
"We believe your pen carries the voice of something timeless."
I sat in silence, staring at my plate.
The Guild.
Even in my old life, that would've meant something.
They weren't just a group of scribes or academics—they were the caretakers of literature in this world. They governed contracts, protected works from theft, sponsored young authors, and had libraries in every major city. For a child—barely seven—to gain their notice?
Unheard of.
My father was quiet for a long time. Then he set the letter down and looked at me.
"Do you understand what this means?"
I nodded slowly.
"If we accept," he continued, "they'll make copies in cities far beyond us. Your story could be read by people hundreds of miles away. Nobles. Scholars. Even royalty."
My stomach twisted, not with fear—but with wonder.
I never set out to become famous. I just wanted to write. To breathe life into words. To shape feelings into pages.
But this…
This was a door. And I could either walk through it—or leave it closed.
I looked at the letter again.
"I want to share it," I said at last. "If it helps people feel what I felt… then yes. Let the Guild have it."
My father smiled and clapped a hand on my shoulder.
"Then we'll make it happen."
And just like that, my story stopped being mine alone.
It became something more.
A shared dream. A piece of hope traveling in wagons, across rivers, between hands calloused from farming and fingers inked from study. Booksellers lit candles early just to display it. Schoolteachers read it aloud to students before class. Even a traveling bard claimed he'd written a song based on the final chapter.
We had to hire two extra workers just to manage letters.
People didn't just want to read the book.
They wanted to write back.
To say what it meant to them. What it reminded them of. Some sent drawings of Nael. Others included their own short stories, hoping I'd read them.
And somewhere in that storm of paper, sweat, and ink—
I realized something simple, powerful, and terrifying:
I had become an author.
Not in a distant, abstract sense.
But in the most human, humbling way.
I had written something that mattered.
And I wasn't done yet.
When we sealed the contract with the Writers' Guild, it felt like signing a page out of a dream.
The Guild's courier arrived at our home one misty morning, dressed in navy robes lined with silver thread. He carried a satchel of official documents and a gleaming signet ring engraved with the Guild's crest. His eyes, though polite, widened slightly when he looked at me—not with mockery, but genuine curiosity.
He expected a man.
Instead, he found a barefoot, ink-stained child with a mop of dark hair and eyes that had seen more worlds in fiction than in real life.
Still, he bowed and addressed me as "Master Ethan."
We gathered in the shop's backroom. My father read every clause, line by line. They promised monthly payments from regional and kingdom-level sales, protection of intellectual rights, and reprint agreements for serialized expansion—terms usually reserved for professional authors decades older than me.
The payment was more than generous. Not just silver. Gold.
Enough to cover years of shop upkeep, house renovations, and even private tutors—if we ever wanted them. But more than the coin, the most powerful part of the contract was this:
"Under Guild Authority, the story 'The Sky Beneath the Water' shall be distributed across all affiliated cities and provinces, in noble courts and common districts alike."
When my father dipped his pen into ink and signed the parchment beside my trembling hand, a gentle shiver ran through me.
This was real.
Within weeks, the Guild's distribution network kicked in.
Boxes of my book—refined, properly typeset, bound in linen covers with shimmering blue foil—began appearing on shelves from the port city of Elowen to the cliffside towns of Highmere. The cover now bore my name, Ethan Aldric, embossed in silver beneath the title.
Bards recited chapters in taverns.
Academics analyzed the metaphor of Nael's transformation.
Booksellers in wealthier cities placed the novel in display windows with handwritten signs:"A tale for all hearts – by the boy whose pen weaves wonder."
But what none of us expected… was how the nobles reacted.
At first, it was a trickle.
A lady from House Caervell sent a letter sealed with violet wax, praising the chapter where Nael survived in the abyss, calling it "a mirror of one's inner solitude."
Then came a velvet-lined parcel from Lord Fenwyn's estate—containing a handwritten thank-you note, a pouch of gold coins, and a lapis brooch shaped like a dragonfish.
My mother nearly dropped it.
Soon after, crates arrived—containing rare fruits, imported teas, embroidered scarves, and even a miniature golden quill with my initials etched on the nib.
Each gift came with a letter. Some elegant, some exuberant.
"Your words moved me more than battle or banquet.""A reminder that even small things have the power to rise.""Your fish made me weep. I did not know I could still cry."
They weren't praising me as a child—they were praising me as a writer.
One day, a letter arrived from the Royal Capital itself.
Not from the palace, but from a young noblewoman named Lady Anvera Thorne—heiress to a powerful merchant house. Her note was short, yet every word etched deep:
"I read the final chapter five times. I believe you have awakened something that I thought long buried. If you ever write again, please… send it to me first."—A. Thorne
It was sealed with a rose-gold stamp. And something about it made my heart beat faster.
Even they, in their silks and marble halls, had found something in my story. Something real. Something worth holding on to.
The shop changed.
My family changed.
My father still kept his apron, still greeted customers with a humble nod—but he now held his head higher. He'd carved out a corner of the store just for my works, with a sign that read:
"Aldric's Corner – Where Stories Take Flight."
My mother no longer worried about coin for bread or medicine. She began keeping a garden behind the house, growing blue lotus flowers like the ones in Nael's pond.
Even Lina walked with a little more confidence, telling every new visitor, "That's my brother, the famous one."
And me?
I still wrote.
Every night, by candlelight, at my little desk by the window.
The gold didn't matter. The gifts were nice, the attention… strange, but welcome.
But in my heart, I still felt like that boy watching a blue fish in a pond, wondering what would happen if it soared into the sky.
Only now… thousands of others wondered too.
They saw themselves in my pages.
And they were waiting for the next flight.