The child stood on the pulsing threads of the Loom, where reality still bled from the King's touch. He was small, barefoot, and terribly still. But stillness, in that moment, held more power than any scream.
He did not flinch when the Garden roared. He did not turn when the Unended stirred behind the King like a tide of potential. He looked only at the man who had refused to end—and waited.
The Forgotten King's breath caught. Not because he was afraid.
But because he remembered.
That face—too young to bear the weight of narrative, too wise to be a coincidence—was one he had never written, never plotted, never dreamed into being. And that was the point.
The child was not a possibility. He was a rejection of possibility.
"I don't know your name," the King said, voice quieter than the flutter of torn pages.
"That's because I never let anyone write it," the child replied.
