Chapter 183: I Wrote That Because I Was a Child

The floor of Lucian’s old bedroom disappeared beneath rows of curling parchment.

Faded ink exposed his six-year-old handwriting in all its glory: misspellings, scratched-out adjectives, Ancient Elvish conjugation tables crammed into the margins. Several of those margins were now treated as philosophical scripture.

Evelyn sat cross-legged opposite him with her hoodie sleeves pushed up. She read three pages of chapter twelve.

“Bro.”

“Don’t.”

She looked at him over the pages. “Bro.”

“I said don’t.”

Evelyn cleared her throat.

“‘Though dawn may never come, the knight has remained at the gate, and there he must remain.’” She lowered the page. “Deep as fuck.”

Lucian threw down his red quill.

“I needed the present perfect of ‘remain’ for a language quest. I couldn’t be bothered to invent a setting, so I put him at a gate.”

“The literature that saved an age.” “I’m going to kill you.”

This was supposed to be a forensic audit. He needed evidence that The Elegy of the Nameless Knight was neither divine revelation

nor a moral system. It was a collection of cheap scenes written by a lazy child farming language proficiency.

If he could strip away the holy-author nonsense, people would stop using his words to demand permanent service from Astra, Eleanor, and Sylvia.

That was the plan. It had been a very good plan until Evelyn started reading aloud.

[CHILDHOOD DOCUMENT ANALYSIS]

Original use: Language-proficiency training.

Subsequent interpretations in collected editions: Extensive divergence. A single causal value linking authorial intention to reader response cannot be calculated.

[ORIGINAL LANGUAGE QUALITY]

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Grammar: Improving.

Vocabulary: Aggressively overused. Metaphor density: Unnecessary.

Recorded cultural influence: A STATISTICAL INSULT.

“Useless.”

[Host feedback recorded.]

Eleanor pushed the half-open door aside and stepped carefully through the papers. She picked up a page from chapter eighteen.

“It doesn’t mean whatever profound thing you’re about to think,” Lucian said.

“I haven’t told you what I think.” “Good.”

She sat on the little wooden chair beside his desk. “Are you worried they misunderstood the book?” He glanced at her.

“Or that they found something true in it you didn’t mean to put there?”

Lucian looked down at his quill.

Sylvia arrived with seven different editions stacked in her arms. Among them were a bloodstained soldier’s pocket copy, a royal school textbook, a thousand-page theological commentary, a workers’ union edition, a children’s picture book, and Valeria’s gold-embossed Demon Realm translation.

She set them on the carpet.

“The same sentences,” she said. “Very different lives.”

She opened the soldier’s copy to page twenty-four and passed it to Lucian.

A passage about the Knight standing alone on watch in the snow had been underlined so often the paper was scored. Beside it, a short note had faded into the margin.

Northern Fourth Regiment. 113 survived.

Lucian stopped chewing his biscuit.

He remembered wanting a few hundred more words of Ancient Elvish. A mysterious, secretly powerful wanderer standing in the snow had seemed an efficient way to get them.

He ran his thumb along the edge of the paper, carefully avoiding the writing.

Evelyn went into the corridor for water and met Boris carrying tea.

“Better prepare yourself,” she told him. “Your young boss is planning a public speech to demolish his own religion.”

Two hours later, a magical news strip lit up the city skyline.

LUCIAN VANCE TO REVEAL THE FINAL REVELATION OF THE NAMELESS KNIGHT!

He stood at his bedroom window with both hands on his head. “How did that become a final revelation?”

At the desk, Sylvia finished examining the paper and ink samples.

“The ink matches the original Vance supply. So does the parch-ment. The manuscripts are authentic, and we can demonstrate it.” She set down her lens. “Do you really want to tell them every-thing?”

Lucian rested his forehead against the window.

“If they know how stupid the truth is, they’ll stop using the book to force Astra and Eleanor into those positions.”

“Perhaps.”

He turned. “Perhaps?”

“You know which words you wrote.” Sylvia gestured toward the books on the floor. “You don’t get to decide everything they’ve become.”

A breeze lifted a loose manuscript page. Lucian caught it before it slid off the desk.

He put it back in order, closed the bundle, and straightened his coat.

“Book the largest hall in Solaris.” Evelyn looked up. “For a signing?” “No.”

He tucked the manuscript under his arm. “An execution.”