Salvation of The Scum Fifth Prince

[68 - breathe; weighing peace]

"Damien," wondered Alvara softly in the still air, "in the ending you wrote, how many died?"

The fox had been silently watching from the shelves, away from the gathered crowd that surrounded the book as if he was an outsider. Soren was also quiet — this was a novel of betrayal and death. 

A hopeful answer to such a question was impossible.

Rather calmly, he said, "Everyone died." 

One by one, they all fell at the hands of the collapsing world. Those who survived still failed to save the world from crumbling, and soon perished. Those who didn't see the end had lost their lives in numerous tragic ways.

Soren slowly asked, "Did you change the story?"

There were inconsistencies.

Raphael Han should've destroyed the corpse before him, and Deimos shouldn't have died. It wasn't only that, but those were the most obvious.

Damien nodded. "When I wrote an ending, I rewrote the story."

"Why?"

"Because there was an error in the characters."

The novel Damien found treated the characters as simple characters. Fiction, usable and for entertainment. 

Raphael Han, who should've been a caring, empathetic man even during his darkest days, was not one who would mutilate the corpse of somebody he didn't know. 

Deimos, who was somebody who was gentle and purposeful, was not strong enough to ignore the death of his youngest brother, as well as his second youngest.

It didn't matter when they were simply characters in a book. For the sake of the story, of the plot, it didn't matter if there were changes in their personalities. As long as they were entertaining or interesting.

But to Damien, who barely managed to work out the story as he deciphered the language, this was his world. His life, and his existence.

He was real. 

And so, he corrected the story until the characters were no longer just words on a paper, but breathing, living humans. He corrected it as much as he could until the ending was set in stone.

Soren suddenly had an eerie thought.

"You wrote your death."

There was a pause, and the listening ears on top of his head tensed. "Why would I not?"

"How long did you survive?"

"What do you think, master?"

This teenager, young as he may be, wasn't completely illogical. If he decided to write an ending, he would've put aside his personal feelings and written it not as a character in the story, but as an author finding a conclusion.

In order to finish this novel, Damien had to disregard himself.

Actually, Soren was a little curious. Why had Damien read the book to begin with? How had he? 

The fox spoke before he could voice his thoughts, inquisitive green eyes staring calmly with startling perception. "Don't you trust in your intuition, master? I found the book in this very library, in the forest. A language that was completely unknown... it was difficult to decipher it."

"Then, how did you? And why were you in the forest?"

"Didn't I know the way to leave it from the very first time we met? I've frequented the forest on various occasions." explained Damien as if he were speaking about something irrelevant. "The language is different from ours, but I've seen many languages before. Finding similar notes and meanings wasn't impossible."