The Fallen Author's Heart in the Land of Love-Chapter 24: The Laws I Made, Ink Without Power

The path was narrow, hemmed in by tall trees that clawed at the sky like they wanted to rip open the clouds. I moved quietly through the underbrush, one foot after another, following the brittle trail inked onto the old map the merchant had given me. It was wrinkled, yellowed by time, but still legible enough to guide me toward whatever came next. A small sack of rations hung from my shoulder—just enough to last me a few days if I was careful, if I didn't let hunger win too early.

The forest was quiet, save for the occasional rustle of unseen things watching from the shadows. But my mind? It wouldn't shut up. It kept replaying that last conversation I had with him—the merchant.

Gods, I still couldn't believe I'd actually gotten my payment.

Not just the food and the coin and the map, no. But the fact that I'd walked away from that fire alive, with everything I'd demanded. He had stared at me like I was some wild animal that had learned to speak. Like he hadn't quite expected me to survive... let alone bargain.

And yet, I had.

Still, that lie I spun—it clung to the back of my throat like smoke.

Tharyvion of the Triune Sigil.

Even saying that name in my head sent a shiver down my spine. That noble house wasn't just powerful—they were practically dukes in everything but title. Politically untouchable. Financially monstrous. Militarily terrifying. And I'd claimed—no, implied—that I had ties to someone like Tharyvion, like I could whisper in their ear or drop their name as if it belonged to me.

If anyone from Triston ever found out I was using a name like that for leverage...I'd be dead.No trial. No plea.

Or worse—dragged into the public square, forced to my knees while a crowd cheered my execution. Or locked away in some rot-stinking cell for the rest of my life, forgotten by time.

And yet I'd done it anyway.

Not because I wanted to die. But because the truth wouldn't have been enough.

So I lied.

To survive. To buy myself a little more time. To carve out a foothold in a world where people like me were born only to beg and bury our dead.

This road I walked now—it wasn't just leading me through the forest.

It was leading me to something I could call mine.

My fate. My choice.

And if I had to risk my life pretending to be more than I am... then so be it.

Better to die chasing freedom than live forever on my knees.

The wind whispered through the trees like it knew secrets it couldn't wait to share. I walked with my shoulders tight and my thoughts louder than my footsteps, my eyes scanning the winding trail ahead, but my mind... my mind was somewhere else entirely.

This system—the Monarchy. The twisted beast that ruled this world.

Gods, it was seriously messed up.

I used to write about things like this in stories back in my old life. Dark kingdoms. Broken empires. Worlds where the crown sat on the head of someone who didn't earn it, just inherited it. And now, here I was, living in the pages of something I used to make up. Except it wasn't fiction anymore. It was reality. Cruel, bloody, iron-clad reality.

This whole idea—a single person, the monarch, emperor, empress, whatever title they dressed it up in—holding absolute power over everyone else? For life? Often just because they were born into it? Yeah. No vote. No choice. Just bloodlines and lies and "divine right."

Opposite of democracy. A system where, back in my old world, people got to choose their leaders. At least pretend to.

Here? You could be a genius, a fighter, a hero, and still rot in the gutter because your parents were farmers or beggars or thieves. Meanwhile, some rich brat who's never lifted a finger gets to rule armies and sign decrees that decide whether you live or die.

It's not just unfair—it's built to stay unfair.

They call it tradition. They call it order. But what it really is... is a cage.

A gilded, rotting cage.

I kept walking, my hand tightening around the strap of my rations sack, and I told myself again what I already knew: no one was coming to save me. No vote would change my place in this world. Not unless I changed the rules myself.

So let them have their bloodlines. Let them kneel to thrones carved from bones.

I'll rise anyway.

Even if I have to burn down the entire system to make room for someone like me.

And then... it hit me.

I paused under the shade of a crooked pine, the sun barely slipping through the branches above, and I let the thought sink its teeth into me.

Now that I think about it—I've forgotten so much about this world. The world I'm living in. The world I wrote.

Bits and pieces are coming back to me, like ashes rising from the wreckage of a long-dead fire. I remember now... this story. It starts simple, doesn't it? Like any fairy tale you've heard before. Kingdoms. Nobles. Heroes. Monsters. A common girl with a dying sister.

But it doesn't stay simple. No, that was the trap.

The deeper you go, the more tangled it gets. Layers upon layers. Lies hidden inside truths. Heroes turning into villains. Love curdling into betrayal. By the time the end rolls around—nothing is what you thought it was. Nothing stays pure.

I remember writing that.

All 435 Chapters of it.

I poured everything into that story. My time. My mind. My soul. It became my escape and my prison both. And for what?

It never even got published.

I still remember that day—clear as crystal, cold as knives. Back in Japan, when I was still Akira. I brought the manuscript to my editor, eyes gleaming with hope, hands trembling with pride.

He read it. He frowned.

Then he looked me in the eye and said, "It's too realistic. Too dark. This isn't what people want in a romance. Change it. Make it sweeter. Happier. Marketable."

He wanted me to gut it. Rip out the parts that mattered. Replace pain with fluff. Replace meaning with market trends.

And that day... something in me shattered.

That was the day I began to hate love.

Not just in fiction. Everywhere. In stories. In people. In myself.

Because what they wanted wasn't love—they wanted a performance. Something polished and pretty and false. And if love had to be rewritten to please the masses, then maybe it was never worth writing at all.

Now I walk through the world I once built with my own hands, watching it unravel and twist in ways even I didn't expect. Maybe this is my punishment. Or maybe...

Maybe it's my second draft.

And this time, I'm writing it on my own terms.

According to what I can remember—fragments stitched together from the broken corners of my mind—this world, the one I'm now living in, was once just a story.

A fantasy born from ink and late nights, from stress and spite and stubborn dreams.

And in that story... there were two great continents.

Two massive landmasses stretching across this world like the wings of ancient beasts, divided by a cruel, yawning ocean so wide no bridge or ship could easily traverse it. An ocean that carved them apart—not just by distance, but by mystery.

I'm in the larger continent. That much, I know.

The soil under my boots, the sky above me, the names etched into maps and whispered in taverns—it all belongs to the greater land. A place of kingdoms and bloodlines, of banners raised and broken, of gods half-forgotten and laws enforced by steel.

But the other continent? The smaller one?

I barely remember anything about it. That's the strange part. I never truly wrote it. I never fleshed it out. It was background. A distant footnote in the pages of my tale. Something to maybe return to later—if I ever reached that point in the story.

So now... it's a blank space. A blind spot in the world's design. A place even I, the so-called creator, cannot predict. A mystery, not only to its people—but to me.

And that terrifies me. And excites me. Because if that place is truly unwritten... then maybe anything could happen there.

As for where I am now—I'm certain I'm in the kingdom of Seraphis.

Seraphis. A name that tastes of old marble and golden thrones. A place of rigid class, hollow elegance, and hidden rot. One of the sixteen countries that make up this sprawling continent. Sixteen nations, each with their own rulers, wars, secrets. I don't remember all their names... not yet. But I remember drawing their borders. Crafting their alliances. Breeding their rivalries.

And now I walk among them, a ghost in the world I built, with knowledge too incomplete to call divine and too dangerous to trust.

Sixteen kingdoms. One broken author. And a second continent lost to time and imagination.

There's so much I don't know anymore.

But maybe that's the point.

The story's changed—and I'm not the one holding the pen this time.

This world... this reality I now breathe and bleed in—it doesn't play by just one set of rules. No, it dances to the rhythm of two great laws: the cold, calculable logic of physics... and the boundless, shimmering wildness of magic.

And I wrote it. I wrote all of it.

The leyline systems. The incantation dialects. The runic lattices woven into the bones of creation. I crafted the mana-flow theories, the elemental thresholds, the binding rituals, the divine channels, the forbidden schools. Every inch of it was mine. Every law, every loophole, every terrifying wonder.

So then why?

Why in all the shattered stars of this realm can't I use any of it?

I'm supposed to be the author, damn it. The one who penned the bloodstained rules into the veins of this earth. And yet here I am—no spark. No flame. No sigil to summon. Just scars. Hunger. Cold nights. The grating silence of power I should have, slipping through my fingers like sand.

The only thing I've been able to remember since waking here is suffering.

No cheats. No chosen-one perks. Not even a flicker of accidental magic. Just the grinding weight of a world that doesn't seem to care who I am or what I once was.

And the cruelest part? I know this system inside and out. I remember the heart of it all—how mana sings, how it pulses through everything living, how it bends to will and emotion and memory.

So why won't it answer me?

Maybe this world sees me as a trespasser. Or worse—a liar. Maybe it's punishing me for every twist I forced on it, every tragic end I wrote for the sake of drama. Maybe the gods I dreamed up have decided they hate me as much as my editor did.

And now I'm here, stuck between survival and the suffocating weight of knowing how easy things could have been. How different.

If I just had one spell... one thread of control... it would change everything.

But I don't.

I have no power. No plan. No allies. Just half-memories and a growing, gnawing question I can't silence:

What do I do next?

What's the next Chapter in a story I no longer control? What's the purpose of this cruel second life?

I don't know yet.

But I have to keep walking. Even without magic. Even without hope.

Because maybe... just maybe... the story hasn't finished writing me.