The Deadlands weren't just empty. They felt like a mouth. One that had forgotten how to swallow.
Lu Shen dragged himself through the grey haze. His boots sank into soil that felt like crushed bone and old chimney ash. Every breath tasted like wet dirt and copper. Like sucking on a dirty coin. Lu Bing was a dead weight on his back, her breathing just a small, ragged hitch against his neck. It was the only sound in a world that had gone completely deaf.
His head was spinning. Honestly, he wasn't sure if he was even walking straight anymore. The fight with the Script-Hound hadn't just drained his power; it had left his insides feeling like they were stuffed with shards of hot glass. Every step was a gamble. He just needed a hole. Some place to crawl into before the world finished erasing his existence.
He found it. Under the ribcage of a long-dead giant. The massive, bone-white ribs arched over a small dip in the earth like the hull of some wrecked, ancient ship. It was a grave, probably. But for now? It was home.
Lu Shen lowered Bing'er. His hands wouldn't stop shaking. It wasn't even the cold, not really. It was just the adrenaline crashing out of his system. It left this hollow, sickly ache deep in his bones. He reached for a pile of grey branches. No real wood grew in this dump. Just these hard sticks that looked like fossilized fingers.
He didn't pull out the Bone-Brush. He couldn't. His fingers wouldn't even curl properly, and the thought of trying to summon the "Tool" made his stomach turn. Instead, he just bit his lip until he tasted iron and scratched a jagged mark onto the grey sticks with a sharp rock.
[COMBUSTION]
The word sputtered. Pathetic. A violet spark caught on the wood, but it didn't smell like a nice campfire. It smelled like burning hair and stagnant water. Greasy, uncomfortable heat. It made his throat itch, but he leaned into it anyway. He had to.
He slumped against a rib of the giant. The stone bit into his shoulder. It hurt, and he actually liked that. The pain was the only thing keeping his eyelids from sliding shut. He looked at a smear of dirt on Bing'er's cheek and felt a sudden, stupid spike of anger. Not at the heavens. Just at the dirt. He wanted to wipe it off. But he couldn't even lift his arm.
Then the world changed.
A sound cut through the silence. A whistle.
It was coming from deep within the fog. It sounded miles away but was somehow impossibly clear. A folk song from the Central Plains. The kind a farmer whistles while walking home from a harvest. It was upbeat. Happy. And in this graveyard, it was the most terrifying thing Lu Shen had ever heard.
His hand reached for his broken blade. His heart was a mess, hammering a frantic, ugly rhythm against his ribs.
The sound got louder. Steady. Step. Step. Whistle. It wasn't a man walking; it was an inevitability. Like the sound of a blade being dragged across a stone. Whoever was whistling wasn't hunting. They were just... arriving.
A green glow started bleeding through the grey. A sickly smudge in the distance. The whistling stopped for a second, replaced by the dry thwack of a cane hitting the bone-dust. Then it started again. Louder. Right on the edge of the firelight.
The man stepped out of the dark.
He wore a bright yellow scholar's robe. A hideous, loud splash of color against the grey. He carried a lantern that leaked that same oily green light, swinging it back and forth like a pendulum.
The stranger stopped. He tilted his head. He was wearing a porcelain mask with a single, massive eye painted in the center. It didn't move, but Lu Shen felt it scanning his soul, peeling back the layers.
"Oh, my," the stranger said. His voice was thin. Like wind through a cracked skull. "A wanderer with a stolen pen. You've made a real mess of things tonight, haven't you?"
Lu Shen tried to stand. His legs gave way. Just gravity. Just the simple weight of a man who was completely done. He slumped back into the ash, his breath coming in short, ugly gasps.
"Don't bother," the masked man chuckled. He took a step forward. Where his green light touched the soil, the bone-dust turned into grass that instantly rotted into black slime. "I'm not here to delete you. Not yet. I'm just the Proofreader."[1]
Lu Shen's blood felt heavy. Like lead. "The Temple sent you?"
"The Temple is a bureaucracy, kid. I'm a freelancer." The Proofreader swung his lantern over Lu Bing. "And I think your story is much too interesting to end here. But tell me... do you even remember your name?"
Lu Shen opened his mouth. He stopped. The 'Lu' was there. But the 'Shen'... it felt like a name he had read in a book once. It didn't feel like him. It felt like a character he used to know.
"I remember," Lu Shen lied. His voice cracked.
The masked man laughed. A dry, hacking sound. "No, you don't. That's the problem with rewriting yourself. You lose the original draft. Soon, there won't be enough of you left to even hold that brush."
The Proofreader stepped closer. The green light was blinding now. "I could help you. Put some 'ink' back in your veins. But everything has a price. I want the girl's name. Give me her name, and I'll let you live through the night."
Lu Shen looked at Bing'er. His chest ached. "No. Hell no."
"A hero," the Proofreader mocked. "How boring. I expected more from a Typo."
The Proofreader turned his head. The whistling stopped.
"But we aren't alone," he said, his voice going cold. "The Hounds were just the scouts. The Script-Eaters have caught your scent."
Far off in the mist, a sound like a thousand wet pages being torn at once echoed through the ribs of the giant. Something massive was moving through the fog. It was fast. It was hungry. And it didn't care about names.