The Fold was quiet.
Too quiet.
Not in the usual stillness of silence, but in something deeper—a lack of response. Ketzerah stood close to its edge, observing its subtle pulses. Not of life. Not even of energy. But of hesitation.
For three days, nothing else had emerged from it.
No false-selves. No corrupted echoes. No manifestations of misremembered memory.
Only blankness.
Too perfect.
Too deliberate.
---
Lian stepped up beside him. Her eyes were narrowed, but her breathing was calm.
"Why do I get the feeling this thing is thinking?"
Ketzerah didn't answer at first.
Instead, he picked up a small stone near the boundary. He tossed it forward.
The Fold didn't consume it.
It didn't erase it.
The stone passed through.
Then it was simply… not there.
Not broken. Not buried.
Just absent.
---
Lian watched carefully. "I saw it land. For a split second. Then…"
Ketzerah tilted his head. "It didn't vanish. It un-happened."
She blinked.
"What?"
He turned to her, more focused now. "That wasn't destruction. That was a reversal of existence."
---
Later that day, Mira returned from the Archive District with unsettling news.
"There's a corridor missing," she said.
Ketzerah raised an eyebrow. "Destroyed?"
"No," she said, pressing her hand to her forehead. "I just realized today—there used to be a hall between the Index and the Scriptorium."
She looked up, pale.
"And I don't remember how or when it disappeared."
---
Elruyne confirmed the sensation.
"It's not just space," she added. "Some people forgot my name for an entire afternoon. Then remembered again. Like… a switch."
Ketzerah frowned deeply.
"Reality doesn't flicker like that."
"Unless," Mira added, "something is overriding it."
---
That night, a boy named Rellan came running through the South Gate.
He was panting. Shaking. Holding something clutched tightly in both hands.
Ketzerah reached him first.
"Rellan, breathe," he said gently.
But the boy didn't look at him. Instead, he slowly opened his fingers.
Inside was a torn piece of parchment.
On it, written in an uneven, typed script—unlike anything produced in their world—were the following words:
autosave failed. file corruption detected.
Ketzerah's breath caught.
This wasn't just out of place.
It wasn't an error of memory or form.
It was a foreign syntax.
Something that didn't belong to any known written system in the Unwritten City.
---
He showed it to Lian and Elruyne the next morning.
Elruyne's face turned grim.
"This isn't code," she said. "It's not magic either."
"It's language," Lian whispered, running a finger over the torn edge. "But it feels like…"
Ketzerah finished for her.
"Like it came from somewhere else."
---
They brought it to the Codex Tree.
Its leaves trembled when the page was brought close.
Not violently. Not in pain.
But like it recognized it—and feared it.
---
Rellan, still shaken, spoke later that evening.
"I didn't find the paper. It found me."
Ketzerah narrowed his eyes. "Explain."
"I was walking near the abandoned circle in the East Quarter," the boy said. "There's nothing there anymore—just outlines. And then… I tripped. On nothing."
He hesitated.
"And when I stood up… the page was in my hand."
---
He looked up, eyes wet.
"I don't remember picking it up. I don't even remember falling."
---
Something was fraying.
Not collapsing.
Not attacking.
But quietly… unraveling.
---
Over the following week, several others reported strange findings:
A mirror that reflected not the viewer, but an older version of them—someone they had never become.
A dream where the sky was filled with moving text in languages no one could identify.
A door that once led to a bedroom now opening to a blank white space… then snapping back to normal an hour later.
---
Ketzerah didn't sleep.
He didn't meditate.
He didn't rebuild the Codex.
Instead, he walked. Constantly.
As if he were looking for the source of something he hadn't yet named.
---
Then, one evening, he found it.
Not the origin.
But the next step.
---
It was carved—deliberately—into the side of a broken stairwell in a forgotten spire.
A sentence.
It read:
"I don't want to write this part anymore."
The letters weren't in ink. They weren't even cut into the stone.
They had never not been there.
As if someone had decided long ago that those words would always be part of this wall—without any of the inhabitants ever seeing it before.
---
Ketzerah ran his fingers over the inscription.
The stone felt cold—not to the touch, but to the will.
Like it had given up.
---
He whispered:
"Someone is speaking."
Then added, barely audible:
"From… outside."
---
He didn't tell the others immediately.
Instead, he began documenting the changes.
Not in the Book Without a Spine—it resisted this truth.
But in a small slate he carved himself.
It held no magic. No narration. No memory.
Only raw observation.
---
He kept track of:
Streets that blinked in and out of presence
Names that faded for a day and returned differently spelled
Whole concepts that people could not remember having ever believed in
Each time, he tested whether the cause came from within their world.
Each time, the answer was no.
---
Then came the night he woke up screaming.
Not from pain.
But from something worse:
In the dream, he had heard a voice say: "You don't belong in this scene."
It was calm.
Final.
As if it were nothing more than a gentle command from someone far above, far beyond.
---
When he told Lian, she asked the most terrifying question of all:
"Do you think… someone is trying to stop writing us?"
Ketzerah didn't answer.
Because the moment she said it… the air shifted.
Like the world had just been notified of an unauthorized idea.
---
Elruyne began seeing outlines—frames where windows hadn't existed.
Mira found two days missing from her journal.
And one morning, Ketzerah discovered a phrase carved on the inside of his own sleeve.
He hadn't written it.
"Terminate process: KZ-0RAH"
He didn't know what it meant.
But he felt it.
Deep in the foundation of his name.
Like an execution command… written not in language, but in rejection.
---
That day, he went to the highest spire in the City.
He looked toward the Fold.
But not at it.
Past it.
To something he couldn't yet see.
---
And for the first time…
He whispered, not to his companions, not to the wind…
But to you.
---
"Who are you?"
"And why are you trying to stop me?"
---
The sky didn't respond.
But something flickered in it.
Not a star.
Not a crack.
Just a faint, blinking cursor.
Waiting.
---
End of Chapter 22 – Faint Footprints on Blank Ground
🕯️ To be continued…
---