Chapter 2: “A Poem They Tried to Burn”

The next morning, Eli woke in a strange kind of stillness—like the air itself was waiting for something to happen.

His eyes opened to the fluorescent flicker above him, but it was as if the light no longer had permission to be casual. Something sacred had happened the night before. Something unnatural and undeniable.

Matthew had come.

Sat in that chair.

Spoken in that voice that held no fear of time.

And left behind the black book that should not exist.

Eli hadn’t opened it since. Not yet. The weight of it on the nightstand had felt heavier than gravity allowed—as if to touch it again would be to admit the world was not as it pretended to be.

Still, something in him stirred.

That familiar whisper, the one that had driven him to write in the first place.

Not a muse. Not inspiration.

Just… unrest.

He reached for the book.

The cover was soft leather—scuffed, uneven. Real. There were indentations in the spine, as if it had once belonged to someone who gripped it too tightly. A small crack in the top-right corner held the faint scent of smoke.

He opened to the first page.

His name was written there in the upper right corner.

His full name. The one he hadn’t used since the trial.

Elias Monroe Trager.

Only three people ever knew that name in full. One of them was dead. One of them erased him.

The third was sitting in a locked ward, holding a book that didn’t exist.

He turned the page.

Matthew’s handwriting was unmistakable. Long, elegant strokes. A pen that danced like it knew it would be read centuries later.

At the top of the next page, in red ink:

Read aloud. Or not at all.

And below it:

A Poem They Tried to Burn

Eli hesitated.

And then, almost involuntarily, began to speak.

We are the echoes of what was never spoken,

The ash that refused to blow away.

We are the ink that stained the algorithm,

The breath behind the screen.

They call us fiction.

We call ourselves survivors.

Each line carved something loose inside him.

As he read, flashes came. Not memories—these weren’t his. Or maybe they were. But from another life.

He saw a courtroom with no judge, only empty chairs and a gavel that never moved. A jury of mannequins watched him. Every one wore a screen where their faces should be, flickering with headlines, hashtags, AI-generated smiles.

One mannequin leaned forward.

“Define real,” it said.

The others nodded in unison.

Eli blinked—

Now he stood in the middle of a city. But it wasn’t New York, not exactly.

The buildings were familiar, but wrong.

Smooth. Faceless. No windows.

People walked with phones surgically embedded in their palms, talking without sound. Eyes glowing faint blue.

And in the sky above them, projected across the clouds:

“Truth is no longer a community standard.”

Then… the fire.

It didn’t consume. It corrected.

Words burned mid-air. Billboards rewrote themselves. Graffiti rearranged its letters to match approved messaging.

And through it all, one figure stood still in the alley.

A woman.

Coat torn. Fingertips ink-stained. Eyes like dusk and smoke.

She held a piece of paper in her hands—burning from the edges inward—but she didn’t let go.

Even as it singed her skin, she held it like something holy.

Eli stepped toward her.

“I know you,” he whispered.

The woman turned, but before he could see her face—

He gasped awake.

Back in Ward 33.

Breath ragged. Skin damp. Heart pounding.

Matthew sat calmly in the chair, legs crossed, watching him.

“You read it,” he said, not asking. “You saw.”

“What was that?” Eli managed, his voice cracking like old timber.

“Echoes,” Matthew said simply. “Of memory that was denied the right to become history.”

Eli’s mouth was dry. He wanted to ask a hundred questions, but only one came out:

“Who was she?”

Matthew didn’t answer. He reached forward, flipping to the next page in the book.

There were no lines of poetry now.

Only a title.

Three words, in bold black ink:

The Trial of the Real

Matthew looked at Eli for a long moment, his expression unreadable.

“You're being summoned,” he said quietly.

Eli blinked.

“To what?”

Matthew rose from the chair. As he stepped toward the shadows, his voice trailed behind him like a silk ribbon:

“To prove you were ever here.”

The light flickered once.

The room emptied.

And the door—locked from the outside—stood open behind him.