The final sentence glowed on the screen before me.
"And so, the academy was saved, though the shadows still lurked beyond its gates, waiting for their time to return."
I exhaled, leaning back in my chair. Another book finished. Another story closed.
Outside my window, the city lights flickered, drowning in the quiet hum of the night. My apartment was silent, save for the ticking of the clock on the wall. It was always like this after finishing a novel—an eerie emptiness, as if the world itself paused, waiting for me to write again.
I rubbed my temples. Veylin Academy had been my world for the past two years, its halls filled with students I had meticulously crafted, its mysteries carefully woven into an intricate narrative. I knew every twist, every secret. And yet, as I stared at the final words, a strange unease settled in my chest.
Something felt... unfinished.
A cold breeze brushed my skin. I frowned. The window was closed.
Then the light flickered.
I turned—only to find the screen of my laptop glitching, the text on the page distorting and shifting. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, hesitating.
Then, in front of my eyes, new words began to appear.
"Wake up, Elias."
My breath hitched. I hadn't typed that.
Before I could react, the room collapsed around me. The walls twisted, the ceiling caved in, and darkness swallowed me whole.
I gasped awake.
Cold air. Damp stone. The scent of old parchment and candle wax.
I wasn't in my apartment anymore.
I was in a library—but not just any library. The towering bookshelves, the flickering lanterns, the intricate crest carved into the wooden doors.
I was inside Veylin Academy.
Panic surged through me as I stumbled to my feet. My body felt... wrong. I reached up, touching my face, my hair—shorter, rougher. My clothes weren't mine. I wore simple academy robes, tattered at the edges, far too worn for any noble student.
Then I saw my reflection in the polished glass of a bookshelf.
I wasn't Elias Vayne anymore.
I was Kael—the forgotten orphan, the only survivor of a massacre.
The extra.
The boy whose story I barely wrote.
And yet, somehow... I was here.
Trapped in my own book.