It bowed.
"I am the Unpublished."
Aiden met its gaze, if it even had one. "You're late."
The Unpublished laughed—a sickly, rustling noise.
"No," it whispered. "I'm early. Too early. I come before stories can begin. I am what waits in the drafts never written."
Its hand reached forward, finger long and quill-shaped. "And you carry the last Pen. You think to defy the void with that?"
Aiden didn't answer.
Instead, he wrote.
Not a word. Not a sentence. A shape.
The Pen bled a streak of red across the darkness, and the void recoiled. The Unpublished hissed, shuddering.
"What did you do?"
"I wrote a line," Aiden said.
The shape hung in the air like a scar. It pulsed with intention. It wasn't finished—but it didn't need to be.
Because it meant something.
The Unpublished howled. Its body began to unravel, letters flying off its limbs like flayed skin. It lunged.
Aiden sidestepped.
He didn't fight with force.
