Chapter One: The quill
The bookshop smelled of old paper and dust, the kind that clung to the air and softened every sound. It was the sort of place where time moved slower, where the hum of the city outside faded into a distant murmur.
"Hmmmm, its old"
Caelum ran a careful hand along the spines of forgotten books, their covers cracked, their titles faded.
He hadn't meant to come here today—his body hadn't been feeling its best, and the walk had left his breath thin, his ribs aching. But there was something comforting about old things, about the way they stood still even as the world moved on.
His fingers hesitated over a stack of parchment and loose sketches, tucked away on a low wooden shelf. Some were smudged with charcoal, others water-stained, the kind of works left behind by someone who had once cared for them but no longer did.
Caelum picked up a few, flipping through them absently.
And that's when he saw it.
A leather case, wedged between the pages of a discarded notebook. It was simple, worn at the edges, held shut by a thin golden clasp shaped like an eye.
Caelum glanced around, as if expecting someone to claim it, but the shop was empty save for the old man at the front, leafing through a newspaper. He carefully unlatched the case and pulled it open.
Inside, resting against faded velvet lining, was a quill. Not just any quill.
It was long and sleek, the feather dark blue with shifting undertones, almost iridescent when turned in the light. The metal nib was sharp, untouched by rust or time. It didn't belong in a forgotten corner of a secondhand shop.
It was too pristine.
Something about it unsettled him. In the way certain things do when they seem too perfect, too out of place.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
Caelum startled slightly. The shopkeeper had appeared at his side without a sound, his voice quiet but knowing.
He was an older man, wiry and ink-stained, the kind of person who had spent his life among books and parchment.
Caelum glanced down at the quill again. "Yeah," he admitted. "How much?"
The shopkeeper's lips quirked into an odd smile. "For you? No charge."
That made him pause. "Why?"
"A quill should belong to someone who knows how to use it."
Something in the man's voice sent a shiver down his spine. He couldn't pinpoint it out exactly—just… something. But Caelum wasn't in the habit of turning down free things, especially not something as well-crafted as this.
He nodded his thanks, tucked the case into his bag, and left.
---
The quill sat untouched on his desk for three days.
Not for any real reason—Caelum had simply been too tired to do much with it. His body had been acting up again, his limbs sluggish, his thoughts clouded by the familiar ache that never truly left.
After all he wasnt in his best condition.
After finishing up his dinner and washing up the dishes caelum went to his desk, he had nothing in particular to do. So on the third night, he found himself staring at it. Staring at the well-crafted quill.
His apartment was small, quiet. The only sounds were the distant hum of the city outside and the slow ticking of the clock on the wall.
The quill caught the lamplight just so, its dark blue feather gleaming.
Carefully, he picked it up. It was lighter than he expected, perfectly balanced in his fingers. Something about it felt… right. Like it belonged there.
He reached for a sketchbook.
For as long as he could remember, drawing had been a quiet escape—one of the few things that made him feel like he had control.
When his body failed him, when his lungs refused to cooperate, the act of putting lines to paper was something steady, something real.
He dipped the quill into an ink bottle on instinct, only to realize—he didn't need to.
The moment the nib touched paper, ink flowed from it, smooth and rich, without any external source.
That gave him pause.
He frowned slightly, but pushed the thought aside. Maybe it was some kind of hidden reservoir built into the handle. Some modern trick disguised as an antique.
Still, there was something oddly fluid about it. The ink bled onto the page with an ease he'd never felt before.
He started with something simple. A leaf.
The quill moved effortlessly, the lines crisp, the shading precise in a way that should've taken more effort. The ink never smudged, never dried unevenly.
It was… strange. Not bad, not unsettling, just—strange.
He set the quill down and studied his work.
"Is there a new technology to improve even ones skills?" Caelum wondered out loud.
The leaf was detailed, more than he'd intended. Every vein, every serrated edge was there, as if he'd spent hours refining it instead of minutes.
Caelum exhaled. Maybe he was just imagining things.
Stretching his arms he sighed "hah. I should sleep."
He leaned back in his chair. His body ached dully, exhaustion creeping in at the edges, but there was a quiet satisfaction in finishing even a small drawing.
Then, just as he reached for his glass of water—
He felt a little shift.
A whisper of movement. Barely there, almost imagined. His eyes flicked back to the page.
The ink shimmered.
The lines darkened, deepened—until the drawing was no longer just a drawing.
Caelum froze, Almost chocking on his breath.
The leaf peeled itself off the page.
For a second, it hovered, caught between existence and something else entirely. Then, slowly, weightlessly, it drifted down onto his desk.
His breath caught, He stared.
The leaf—his drawing—poped out as if real. Tangible. He could see it, hold it.
His fingers hovered over it, hesitant.
When he finally picked it up, it felt exactly as it should. Thin, delicate, with tiny veins running through it.
The weight of the moment settled over him like a slow-moving tide.
His pulse thudded in his ears.This wasn't possible.
It wasn't a magic trick, wasn't some clever illusion. He had drawn a leaf, and now it existed outside the page.
The quill lay on the desk beside him, its feather dark and unmoving.
Caelum swallowed, his throat dry.
'This is real.'
And he had no idea what it meant.
"Im too weak aren't i?".
He looked at the leaf and then at the quill again.
'im just too tired to be hallucinating'
Thinking it was a tick of his tired mind, caelum rolled over to the bed and drifted to sleep.
----------
----
The leaf was still there in the morning.
Caelum had expected to wake up and find it gone—that somehow, sleep would reset the world to normal. That maybe he had imagined it, or that it had been some strange dream induced by exhaustion.
But there it was.
It rested exactly where he had left it, on the worn wooden surface of his desk.
'Real.'
He reached out hesitantly and picked it up again, turning it between his fingers. It felt no different from any other leaf he might have plucked from a tree outside.
Paper-thin, delicate, and fragile in a way that made him nervous to press too hard. The only thing unnatural about it was that it shouldn't exist at all.
Caelum let out a slow breath and set it down again, staring at it like it might get up and walk away.
His mind was a tangled mess of thoughts.
This wasn't possible. And yet, it was.
He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his face with both hands, trying to will his thoughts into order.
Magic wasn't real. He knew that. He wasn't a child, and he wasn't someone who believed in the impossible. He believed in facts, in the tangible, in things that could be explained.
And this—this—had no explanation.
His gaze drifted to the quill, still resting beside his sketchbook.
Had it always been like this? Had someone before him discovered its secret, or had it simply been waiting for the right person?
He exhaled sharply. His hands were trembling slightly, though he wasn't sure if it was fear, excitement, or something in between.
He needed to test it again.
Carefully, he opened his sketchbook to a blank page. His fingers hovered over the quill for a moment before he picked it up.
The weight of it was familiar now, balanced perfectly in his grip. The feather caught the light with that same deep blue shimmer, as if ink itself had been woven into its fibers.
He pressed the nib to the page and began to draw.
This time, he took his time.
The quill moved effortlessly, as if guiding his hand rather than the other way around. Every line was crisp, every stroke smooth, as if the ink anticipated where it needed to go before he even thought of it.
He drew a feather—simple, nothing too complicated. He needed to know if the first time had been a fluke.
When he was done, he set the quill down and leaned back, watching.
At first, nothing happened.
His heart thudded in his chest, half hoping, half dreading. Maybe it had been a trick of exhaustion the night before. Maybe—
Then, the ink shimmered.
A slow, subtle shift, like heat rippling off pavement in the summer.
The feather darkened, edges sharpening. The paper beneath it almost seemed to breathe.
And then, just as before, it peeled itself off the page.
Caelum's breath hitched.
The feather landed beside the leaf, as light as air.
He swallowed hard, staring at it, his mind cycling through a dozen emotions at once.
This was real, He wasn't dreaming.
And that terrified him.
---
He didn't touch the quill again for two days.
Not because he didn't want to—his hands itched to pick it up again, to see what else it could do—but because the weight of what it meant settled too heavily on his shoulders.
The world had rules. He had spent his entire life abiding by them, finding comfort in their certainty. The sun rose and set, people lived and died, and ink did not come to life.
But now, there was something new. Something that had rewritten the rules in front of his eyes.
And if one rule could be broken… how many others could?
That thought stayed with him, gnawed at him as he lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling.
By the third day, he gave in.
If the world had changed, then he needed to understand how.
---
This time, he planned carefully.
He chose his subject with precision—nothing alive, nothing complicated.
A key.
He sketched slowly, testing the limits of the quill's ink. The details were easy to bring out—the notches, the tiny ridges along the handle, the faint imperfections that made it look used rather than new.
When he was finished, he sat back and waited.
The ink shimmered.
The key lifted off the page.
Caelum exhaled through his nose, picking it up with deliberate slowness.
It was cool, solid, its weight familiar in his palm. It was, in every way, real.
A key to what?
Nothing. It wasn't a copy of a key he owned. It had no purpose, no lock it belonged to.
But that didn't matter. What mattered was that it was real. Something he had brought into existence with nothing but ink and paper.
Something no one else in the world had.
A slow, dawning realization settled over him then, colder than he expected.
If he could create a key…
Could he create a door?
Could he create things bigger?
The thought sent a shiver down his spine.
He needed to think.
He needed to breathe.
---
That night, as he lay in bed, he let himself think about the bigger question.
Why had he found the quill?
What was he supposed to do with it?
If it had come to him years ago—before the doctors, before the scans, before the quiet conversations that never carried good news—maybe he wouldn't have thought so much about it. Maybe he would have taken it for granted, played with it like a toy.
But now…
Now, time was different for him.
It wasn't endless.
He had spent years making peace with the fact that his life had an end date.
Not everyone got the privilege of growing old. Some people were given thirty, forty, fifty years. Some barely got ten. He had learned not to be bitter about it.
Still, there were days when it was harder to accept than others.
And there were nights—like this one—where he stared at the ceiling and wondered if he'd be here next year. Or the year after that.
A year. Two at most. That was what they had told him.
It wasn't fair. But fairness had never been part of the deal.
Now, though…
His gaze flickered toward the desk, where the quill sat in the dim light, waiting.
What did time mean when you could create something outside of it?
What did reality mean when you could draw your own?
For the first time in a long while, something stirred in his chest.
A quiet, unfamiliar feeling.
Excitement.
Not for survival, not for some miracle cure. But for something else.
Something he could build. that would last, even if he didn't.
His fingers curled slightly against the blanket.
Tomorrow, he would draw again.