…impossibly tall, his limbs too long, neck bending at an angle no spine should allow. His body is wrapped in a cloak made of discarded plotlines, stitched with rejected prophecy and bloodied themes. Where his face should be is only a blank mask of parchment—no eyes, no mouth—yet somehow, he sees. Somehow, he speaks.
"You wrote me into silence," he says, and though there is no mouth, the words thunder across the water. "But silence is a blank page. And blank pages… hunger."
Zixuan stumbles back as the villagers begin to weep ink. The lake pulses, emitting a low, tremorous beat like a heart—but off, irregular, broken. The spooled thread shifts, revealing a core: an ancient quill, black as void, pulsating with molten glyphs.
"He's using them," Cecilion murmurs. "The villagers. Their memories, their histories. They're becoming pages in his book."
