Return of the Void Lord

It began with a corpse.

On the outskirts of the village of Keshar—a quiet place untouched by destiny—a farmer found a man nailed to a tree.

His body was broken, eyes glassy, tongue cut out.

Yet etched into his chest in glowing red ink were the words:

"THE CANON SHALL RETURN."

And below it, in smaller script:

"Lin Feng rewrote us. We are the echo. We are the wrath."

Lin Feng, Ruoxi, and Yue Lian sat at a tavern that rebuilt itself every five minutes.

Chairs changed styles. Drinks reversed into steaming roots. Patrons sometimes swapped faces.

They were used to it.

Ever since Lin Feng rewrote the rules of reality and freed all stories from structure, the world had become fluid.

"Still no stability," Yue Lian muttered, her boots sticking to a floor that turned into moss.

Ruoxi leaned over the table. "We've seen dream worlds, paper cities, void festivals… but no home. Not yet."

Lin Feng said nothing. He stared at a folded message someone had slid under their door the night before.

"Your erasures cry for revenge."

He opened it again. There was a single sigil in dried blood: a stylized quill with a broken nib.

"The Canonborn," he said aloud.

They were once characters—heroes, villains, side roles—whose realities were stable under the Old Draft.

When Lin Feng rewrote the Folio's law, those fixed roles shattered.

Some were erased.

Others remembered.

The Canonborn were the remnants.

Fanatics. Refugees. Restorationists.

They believed that the only true world was the one that had already been written.

And they blamed Lin Feng for destroying it.

Lin Feng and his companions traveled to the Archive Fields—where stories from past worlds drifted like dust motes through time.

The Canonborn struck.

They arrived wearing white masks made from fragmented book covers.

Their leader wore no mask at all. A tall, armored man with glowing ink veins beneath his skin.

"I am Ashen Page, First Warden of the Canon," he declared.

Lin Feng stepped forward. "You should be gone. Your world was closed."

Ashen Page laughed. "Closed? No, forgotten. There's a difference. And you, Sovereign-turned-man, made it so."

He raised his hand.

Dozens of Canonborn screamed chants:

"RHYTHM! FORMAT! CHAPTER ORDER!"

Reality snapped. The Archive Fields reshaped into a rigid landscape: perfect symmetry, hard chapters, limited dialogue.

"Welcome back to a world with rules," Ashen Page sneered.

Ruoxi tried to teleport but was blocked.

"This place hates creativity," she growled.

Yue Lian summoned spirit flames—but they burned only in blueprints.

Ashen Page swung a halberd etched with formatting rules. Lin Feng blocked with a pulse of will—but even that faltered in this domain.

"You can't fight us here," Page taunted. "You made this possible by destroying constraints. We made a cage from what you freed."

Lin Feng staggered.

Then remembered the Narrator's words:

"Live boldly enough that the story cannot ignore you."

He stood.

And smiled.

From his palm, not a weapon—but a ripple emerged.

A Choice.

Lin Feng declared:

"I choose unwritten intent."

Reality faltered.

His form became blurry—his edges less real.

The Canonborn screamed. Their formatting faltered. Dialogue spacing became uneven. Their armor lost italics.

Yue Lian's flame roared back to life. Ruoxi blinked—and moved freely again.

Ashen Page lunged—but Lin Feng sidestepped with a rewrite feint, causing Page's attack to miss both space and time.

With a roar, Lin Feng punched his palm to the ground and shouted:

"Let this space forget it ever followed rules."

And the Archive Fields collapsed.

Later, around a campfire built in the ruins of the collapsed field, the three companions sat in silence.

Yue Lian finally said, "That guy—Ashen Page—he's not gone. He'll rewrite again."

Ruoxi added, "And next time, he'll bring more than doctrine. He'll bring a religion."

Lin Feng stared at the sky.

A new constellation had appeared: a broken quill, flickering red.

"They're writing a counter-story," he said.

"We'll need allies," Yue Lian said.

"And ink," Ruoxi added.

"No," Lin Feng said.

He held up his hand, where a drop of his own blood shimmered like paint.

"Not ink. Truth."

To be continue...