Ink Between Worlds

Chapter 4

Tiana

I skip my afternoon classes.

I know it’s reckless. I can already hear Mrs. Lane's disappointed sigh and imagine the weight of another warning email about attendance. But none of that matters right now. Not when I can still feel the heat of Bradley’s presence like it branded my skin.

Celeste saw him.

Not just me. Not just some fantasy I conjured up in my head. She saw him, and she was afraid.

I keep walking, feet moving faster and faster until I’m out of the college gates, down the side road that leads to the forest, and finally beyond the patrol line where I know I won’t be followed.

The woods are darker now. Heavier.

I find my tree, the one I always write under when the world is too much, and I sit at its base, pulling out my notebook.

The edges are worn, the pages curled. I run my fingers over the leather cover. I want answers, and somehow, I know they’re buried in the ink I poured onto these pages.

Why Bradley? Why now? Why me?

I open to a fresh page, hand shaking:

"Sometimes, the fire doesn’t burn what’s around her , it burns inside her, waiting to rise, to bloom into power she never asked for."

I stare at the words, shocked, they’re not mine.

I didn’t write that.

My chest tightens. I flip to the next page.

She is not just a wolf. She is the bridge. The witch born under a blood moon. The one who writes worlds.

“No,” I whisper, voice trembling. “No, no, no.”

I close the notebook, heart racing. Did Bradley write this? Is he writing back?

Or worse... is something else writing through me?

I push off the ground and turn to leave, but the wind picks up. Leaves whip around my legs. The air hums like it’s alive.

Then I hear a voice, not mine,not Bradley’s. Feminine, “You cannot outrun what you are, child, It even took way too long.”

I spin around, searching, but no one is there.

“You are the ink and the flame. The boundary and the breach. The world has already begun to bleed.” The voice continues.

My vision goes black for a moment, just a flicker, like someone blinking out the sun. And when it clears, I’m not alone.

Standing ten feet away is a woman cloaked in silver and dark green, her eyes glowing faintly beneath her hood. She looks like she belongs in a myth.

“Who...who are you?” I manage to say.

The woman lowers her hood. Her face is angular, beautiful, not young and not old. Her voice is calm, but it carries the weight of centuries.

“I am Elenna, sentinel of the Between.”

“The... what?”

“The Between, the place where fiction seeps into flesh. Where what you write breathes.” She explains.

I shake my head. “You’re telling me this is some kind of magic? A spell? I’m not..”

“You are a witch, Tiana, a rare kind, a Story Weaver. One who can write living things into the world. Most die before they awaken. Your wolf kept you dormant. But now that you’ve written him” she tilts her head, “you’ve broken the seal.”

“You mean... I brought him here?”

Elenna nods. “Yes. But not just him. The Between has cracked. The stories want out. Some will protect you. Others... won’t.”

I stumble backward.

“This can’t be happening. I just, I just wanted someone to love me.”

Elenna walks toward me slowly, her gaze gentle. “And so you gave him love. But you also gave him enemies, conflict, War. Every story needs one. You gave him a world of his own. And that world threatens to mix with ours.” She adds.

I remember the murder scene I wrote in the margins. The villain I named out of spite. The monsters I designed to test Bradley’s strength.

They’re real now too.

“What do I do?” I whisper.

“Write carefully, and don’t stop. Your words are your blade, your shield, your spell. But be warned...” her voice hardens, “should you write your own ending, the Between will claim you.” What she means by this I don’t really understand.

She lifts a pendant from around her neck and presses it into my hand.

“For when you forget who you are.”

And in the blink of an eye, she vanishes.

"Don't leave, wait..." I scream but she doesn't show, I still have questions though. What did I do?

I stare down at the pendant. It’s shaped like a crescent moon inked in silver, resting over a quill. The metal is warm, pulsing slightly, like a heartbeat in my hand.

That night, I don’t eat. I barely breathe.

I sit at my desk with the notebook open, a fresh page before me, Bradley is real.

Magic is real, not like the stories Mama told me about us being in a lineage of witches, im actually a witch, a Weaver. A bridge between worlds.

And I’m scared, and apparently I brought doom to our world and I don't know how to fix it. Ellena told me not to stop writing. I'm scared, but more than anything, I am no longer alone. I have Bradley, or do I?

I pick up the pen and write:

He stands at the edge of the trees, watching her window, knowing she is more than the girl who wrote him. She is the reason the stars blink. The reason stories exist.

Outside, the wind stills.

And I feel him waiting. I want to invite him in, but I don't know where to begin. He knows me, sees me, loves me. I've always wanted to be loved, I created this book so I could write the love I wanted to experience. Now he's here and I don't know what to do. He's fiction.