They came for him by noon.
Not soldiers. Worse.
Archivists.
They wore neutral colors and carried no weapons, because knowledge had always been sharper. Their leader, a woman with eyes like erased chalk, smiled politely.
"You've seen it," she said.
Erynd rolled the map shut. "Seen what?"
"The Unwritten Land."
The name tasted wrong.
She leaned closer. "The moment you draw it… it becomes inevitable."
That was the lie everyone believed.
The truth was worse.
Erynd did not create futures.He anchored them.
Possibility, once mapped, became heavy. Hard to avoid. Harder to undo.
So he ran.
Not east or west—but down, into the underlevels of Lathryn, where streets forgot their own names. As he fled, the city itself began to move.
Buildings slid aside. Alleys narrowed. Bridges disconnected mid-step.
Lathryn was a Sentient Settlement, an old experiment abandoned by its creators.
And today, it had decided Erynd was a problem.
"Traitor cartographer," the streets whispered.
He barely escaped—helped by a girl who stepped out of a wall that hadn't been a door a moment ago.
"You shouldn't stay where you're predicted," she said.
"Who are you?" Erynd gasped.
She smiled sadly. "Temporary."