The Fallen Author's Heart in the Land of Love-Chapter 21: The Breaking Point

The computer screen bathed the room in a gentle glow, flickering softly like a heartbeat. The smell of instant noodles lingered, clinging to her clothes like memories that refused to die. The rain tapped gently on the glass—tap-tap-tap, like fingers on a coffin lid.

She sat cross-legged on the bed. Her old bed. The real bed. The soft one. A sanctuary once.

She typed.

Each word appeared like it used to, blooming gently on the screen.

A love story.

A simple one. Tender. Innocent.

Moonlit confessions. Lovers lost and found. A kiss beneath falling cherry blossoms. Tragedy spun like silk into poetic salvation. A reader’s fantasy.

Aira scowled.

“This is so cheesy,” she muttered, stuffing her mouth with stale chips. Salt clung to her lips like tiny crystals of resentment.

She leaned back and sighed.

"Why do people even like this stuff? Romance is so predictable. It’s always the same. Can’t they just… I don’t know, suffer a little?"

Her laugh cracked through the silence.

Dry. Bitter. Ugly.

She turned back to the screen—

And then the words changed.

The soft dialogue—the delicate “I love yous” and trembling hands—curdled. The letters twisted like maggots writhing on the page.

The confessions turned into screaming.

The poetic metaphors choked into cries for help.

The moonlit kisses melted into blood-soaked pleas.

Aira’s breath caught.

She tried to type.

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Her fingers refused.

The screen flickered, and the words began to write themselves.

"You made this world."

She felt her heart stop.

"You gave us life."

The laptop trembled violently, the keys rattling like teeth.

The walls blackened. The wallpaper peeled like scabbed skin. Cracks split open, crawling across the ceiling like veins bursting beneath the flesh of reality.

Her bed began to sink, slow and greedy, devoured by the floor like some unseen mouth.

Her body wouldn’t obey. She couldn’t stand. Couldn’t scream.

"You brought us here."

Her chest locked. Her ribs closed like a coffin.

The apartment crumbled.

Reality shattered.

She fell.

And fell.

And fell.

And fell—

The Cart and the Horror in Her Mind

Aira gasped awake.

Pain screamed through her skull, a spike of white-hot agony behind her eyes. The light stabbed at her brain. Her throat was sandpaper. Her skin clung to her bones in a slick, feverish sweat.

She was in a cart.

A wooden cart.

The kind used to carry corpses.

It rocked over uneven terrain. Blankets—coarse and damp—covered her. Around her, voices murmured in low, wary tones. Mercenaries. She knew the scent of blood on their clothes. The stink of rusted weapons.

She jerked her head, and the world spun.

A face appeared. A man with a scar like a rope burn down his jaw.

“You’ve been out for two days,” he said, voice dull, eyes empty.

Two days.

Gone.

Stolen.

Her heart thrashed.

And then—

A scream tore out of her.

It wasn’t human.

It wasn’t grief.

It wasn’t pain.

It was the sound a soul makes when it splinters.

A raw, howling thing—ripped from her chest like meat from bone. It made the horses rear. It made the mercenaries flinch, recoil. One crossed himself. Another backed away, muttering prayers.

She clutched her head, nails dragging down her scalp.

She remembered it all.

The dream.

The screen.

The words.

You made this world.

Her mouth foamed with bile. Her breath came in short, panicked bursts.

She had written this world.

Not metaphorically.

Not artistically.

Literally.

A god with a keyboard.

But gods were supposed to be benevolent.

She was not.

She had been an adult. A writer. A tired soul writing stories to pass the time.

Now—she was a 14-year-old girl again. Weak. Small. Breakable.

She clawed at her arms.

Nails dug in.

Blood welled up.

Why?

Why had she been thrown into this world? This cruel echo of her own creation? Why was everything wrong?

Her sister was dead.

Her home was a memory.

She was a ghost of her own past self, stuck in a version of a story she never meant to write.

No redemption arcs.

No kisses in the rain.

Only monsters.

Only death.

Only the rot of despair.

And the worst part—

The world didn’t care.

The cart kept rolling.

The sky above was beautiful—an azure dome without sympathy, birds flying across it as if mocking her grief.

The world she wrote did not care for its author.

She began to laugh.

Just a small sound at first.

A cracked giggle.

Then louder.

Shriller.

More hysterical.

It spilled out of her, a horrible symphony of laughter and sobbing. Her eyes flooded with tears. Her ribs heaved, spasmed.

The mercenaries stared.

One whispered, “She’s gone mad.”

Another muttered, “That’s not a child.”

They were right.

She wasn’t Aira anymore. Not the Aira who giggled over clichés. Not the Aira who typed “happily ever after” like it meant something.

That Aira had died.

Her laughter died with a final ragged breath. She stared at her hands.

Trembling.

Bloodied.

Alien.

Then she whispered the last words of the person she used to be.

The words she would never say again.

“I don’t want to be here anymore.”

And with that—

The girl called Aira collapsed into herself.

Not physically.

But in spirit.

Something inside her withered.

Snapped.

Died.

And from that corpse—something new began to crawl out.