SEENEE
There are things I know.
Things I am supposed to know.
Beginnings.
Endings.
The rules between them.
I have watched stories form.
I have watched universes die.
I have watched heroes rise from places where hope should have been impossible.
And I have watched monsters become the reason those heroes were needed.
But lately...
there was one name I kept returning to.
NAFSAN.
I stood before Sirna's Reality Book.
Its pages moved without wind.
Stories passed beneath my eyes.
Past.
Present.
Future.
Possibilities that had not yet become memories.
I wasn't searching for Nafsan.
Not this time.
I wanted to see the people who would encounter him.
The heroes.
The warriors.
The kings.
The survivors.
Anyone whose path would one day cross his.
The first appeared.
I read.
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Then the second.
Another world.
Another life.
Another reason to stand against him.
Then another.
And another.
And another.
I stopped counting.
Some would meet Nafsan as an enemy.
Some would hunt him.
Some would fear him before ever seeing his face.
Some would believe killing him was necessary.
Some would lose something because of him.
Some would find something because of him.
And some...
The page turned.
I stopped.
"...What?"
I leaned closer.
That wasn't what surprised me.
Nafsan was dangerous.
I already knew that.
I had seen enough to understand that wherever his path went...
stories would move around him.
What disturbed me was everything surrounding those encounters.
Sirna.
I turned another page.
Then another.
Faster.
Worlds.
Stories.
Heroes.
Different times.
Different places.
Different reasons.
Yet the further I followed the paths connected to Nafsan...
the stranger Sirna's future became.
I knew Sirna.
At least...
I thought I did.
I knew how stories behaved inside it.
I knew what could happen.
I knew what could not.
But the Reality Book was showing me things that did not fit comfortably inside either category.
I turned another page.
My hand stopped.
"No..."
Another.
My eyes widened.
Another.
Silence.
For perhaps the first time...
I wasn't shocked by what happened to a character.
I was shocked by what happened around them.
To stories.
To worlds.
To Sirna itself.
I looked backward through the pages.
Had I missed something?
A cause?
A beginning?
There had to be one.
Stories do not simply arrive at consequences.
Something leads there.
A choice.
A person.
A mistake.
A victory.
A death.
Something.
I searched.
And the more I searched...
the more names appeared.
Heroes who had not been born yet.
Heroes who believed they understood what Nafsan was.
Heroes who would dedicate themselves to stopping him.
Heroes who would stand before him even when every instinct told them to run.
One page showed a crown.
Another...
a broken world.
Another...
a hand covered in blood.
Another...
nothing I could understand.
I turned the page.
And froze.
For several seconds...
I forgot to speak.
I had been searching for the heroes who would encounter Nafsan.
Instead...
I had found a question.
A question so large that every previous question suddenly felt smaller.
I looked at the Reality Book.
"The future of Sirna..."
The words barely left my mouth.
I knew futures could change.
I knew choices mattered.
But this wasn't simply one character taking another path.
There were too many connections.
Too many stories.
Too many worlds.
Too many people whose lives somehow approached the same impossible point from completely different directions.
And somewhere among all of them...
NAFSAN.
I closed the Reality Book.
For once...
I didn't want another answer.
Because I had begun to understand something uncomfortable.
Perhaps the problem wasn't that parts of Nafsan's story were missing.
Perhaps I had been asking the wrong question.
Not:
What will Nafsan do to Sirna?
But...
what will Sirna become...
because Nafsan was allowed to enter it?
The Reality Book remained silent.
And somewhere...
in another story...
another voice began to speak.
***
I rose to my feet and let my dark cloak catch the wind.
Below the mountains, the world stretched toward a horizon that no longer looked peaceful.
They had called me many things.
Some deserved.
Some invented.
Some repeated so many times that people stopped asking whether they had ever been true.
I looked toward the lands below.
I never spilled the blood they accused me of spilling.
But if saving those who are too afraid to ask a monster for help requires me to descend from these mountains...
then I am ready.
The wind grew stronger.
For a moment...
I remembered a voice.
Warm.
Distant.
A mother's voice.
A lullaby carried from a life that felt impossibly far away.
Breathe, my beloved.
The words remained.
The mother's lullaby was never a prophecy of my goodness.
It was a warning to the world...
of what happens when a blessed child is forced to grow up in exile.
I looked toward the world waiting below.
"Breathe, my beloved."
I breathe now.
But not for myself.
I breathe...
to become the shield that darkness requires.
The cloak moved behind me.
I stepped forward.
And somewhere beyond what I could see...
Sirna's Reality Book turned another page.
By itself.
THE SPOILERS YET TO BE SPOILERS
THE AUTHOR'S TRAP
CONTINUES.