The sky was made of parchment.
Stars, like ink blots, bled slowly across its surface. Every now and then, one would fall — but it didn't vanish. It landed. Somewhere. And when it did, a tree grew in its place.
Elías and Tirian stood at the edge of something that looked like a forest — but wasn't. The trees here had no roots. They hovered inches above the earth, anchored by memory alone. Their bark was carved with names, thousands of them, in scripts long extinct. Each name pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat.
"This place isn't natural," Tirian said.
Elías answered, "It's not meant to be."
As they stepped between the hovering trees, the air thickened. Not with fog, not with smell, but with recognition. Each tree turned slightly as they passed. Each name watched. Judged.
One tree leaned lower, and a voice whispered from its hollow trunk:
"Elías."
He froze.
It spoke again.
"You left us behind."
Tirian turned. "You know this voice?"
Elías didn't answer.
The tree wept — but not sap. Words trickled down its bark, forming a sentence that vanished as soon as they read it:
"You cannot rewrite what you never faced."
The forest wasn't made to be walked.
It was made to accuse.
Each tree held a name he had forgotten, erased, or abandoned. Faces blurred by time. Victims of his silence. The things he could not — or would not — save.
Tirian placed a hand on one bark, and the tree cracked open like a wound. Inside: a scene. A memory not his. A child watching his family burn. Flames shaped like angels. Screams carved into the sky.
Tirian stumbled back. "This place is alive."
"No," Elías whispered. "It's undead."
They kept walking.
The deeper they went, the louder the forest grew. Names chanted. Accused. Sang lullabies in forgotten dialects. Some begged. Some laughed. Some screamed in ink.
And then —
A clearing.
In the center, a throne made of severed tongues.
And upon it — a figure cloaked in mirrors.
It had no face. Only a mask made from shards of names — stitched together by blame.
The figure raised its hand.
And the forest went silent.
It spoke:
"You come with a pen, but no confession."
Elías stepped forward. "I came to remember."
"Then remember pain."
The mirror-face shattered.
And the trial began.
---
The ground below Elías opened, swallowing him in a spiral of voices. He fell into his own past — but not as he recalled it. As others did. Every mistake amplified. Every hesitation turned fatal. He saw the moment he turned away from a dying village. The time he let Tirian take a wound meant for him. The child he walked past. The friend he did not bury.
Each scene twisted truth with perspective.
Each scream asked:
"Why didn't you write us back into existence?"
---
Back in the clearing, Tirian stood alone before the tongue-throne.
The mirrored figure reformed — now shaped like Elías, but taller, crueler. A version of him that had chosen power over compassion. It drew a blade shaped like a question mark.
It lunged.
Tirian met the strike with steel.
---
Below, Elías clawed through the false memories. The pen floated beside him again, dripping meaning. He reached for it — and this time, it pierced him. Not as a wound, but as a price.
The ink entered his veins.
The past burned away.
---
He emerged from the soil like a rebirth — covered in letters, bleeding stories.
Tirian was on his knees.
The false-Elías raised the blade for the final blow.
Elías caught it mid-air.
The mirrored clone shattered — not from force, but from truth.
"I don't need to rewrite what I've owned," Elías said.
The throne cracked.
The trees bowed.
And the forest fell silent.
---
From the sky, a single feather drifted down — not black like the pen, but white, soaked in red.
Elías caught it.
It pulsed.
It was not divine.
Not yet.
But it was watching him.
---
They left the forest in silence.
Behind them, the names whispered no more.
Ahead of them, the sky bled slightly — just enough to hint that the world was watching back.
---
And for the first time, Elías asked himself:
If I'm not writing the truth…
who is?