CHAPTER 1: THE UNRAVELING THREAD
The axe fell.
And passed through my neck like morning mist through a tree branch.
Silence.
Not the dramatic, pregnant silence of a theater, but the genuine, confused silence of reality catching an error in its code. The headsman stumbled forward, the weight of his swing meeting no resistance. He crashed off the platform, his axe clattering on the cobblestones with a terribly ordinary sound.
I stood, unharmed.
The golden thread I had seen—the one connecting the axe blade to my neck—was simply gone. Not severed. Unwritten.
Around me, the crowd's reaction unfolded in perfect, predictable beats: confusion, murmuring, then shouts of alarm. Guards shifted uneasily. The nobles on the viewing dais leaned forward, their bored expressions replaced by sharp curiosity.
My eyes—Leo's eyes—scanned the scene, seeing more than light. Golden threads. They shimmered everywhere, connecting people to actions, to futures, to each other. A tapestry of predetermined fate.
I was seeing the story.
And I had just edited a sentence.
"Sorcery!" Prince Cedric's voice cut through the din, righteous and firm. He stood, his hero's jaw set, a hand on the hilt of his blessed sword. "The traitor uses dark magic!"
Liana, the saintess beside him, pressed a delicate hand to her lips. Her eyes, however, held not horror, but rapid calculation. She was checking the script in her head, and I had just gone off-page.
My gaze slid past them to the figure at the edge of the dais.
Elara Vane.
The villainess. Dressed in violent crimson, a mask of cold contempt perfectly applied. But her thread… it vibrated with a frantic, dissonant energy. Fear, yes. But beneath it, a wild, desperate hope. The axe's failure had not just spared me; it had cracked the glass wall of her world.
A guard grabbed my arm. I turned my head slowly. He was a big man, face scarred, his thread thick with mundane brutality and a debt to a dockside lender.
"You wish to be the man who touched a ghost?" My voice was Leo's, but the inflection belonged to someone much older, someone who had measured time in the crumbling of empires.
He recoiled. His thread flickered, doubt inserted.
Chaos blossomed. More guards surged. Cedric barked orders.
I didn't fight. I observed. This body was weak, malnourished, magically inert. A prison of flesh and mediocrity. But inside… a single, cold ember glowed. A remnant of what I was. Not a god. An architect. One who understood the nature of stories.
As they dragged me back to the dungeons, I sent a whisper along the trembling thread that connected me to Elara. Not words. A concept. An image of scissors cutting through golden strings.
She gasped, her hand flying to her temple. Her eyes locked onto mine across the rioting courtyard.
The offer is made, I thought.
The game was no longer about Leo's survival. Survival was for insects.
The game was about learning to hold the pen.