On the seventh night since the paper appeared, Ella returned to the lake.
The sky was covered in ash, and the air was thick with the scent of ancient moss and a chill not of winter but of memory.
She hadn't come to search. She had come to wait.
For days, the anonymous letters had begun to take on a different tone. No hints, no names. Just strange phrases:
"It all began when the pen was placed in a hand that didn't know ink."
"He who wants to die chooses silent water."
"Try coming back. But not as a policewoman."
She was wearing a long black coat, holding a file in one hand and the old pistol she hadn't used since resigning in the other.
She stood at the edge of the lake, the same spot where Leonard's body had been found.
But the goal wasn't just to wait.
It was to try.
She took a small statue from her pocket—a stone replica of an unfinished literary figure from one of the books Leonard had reviewed before his death.
She stuck it into the mud by the water, like a sign, or a curse.
Then she opened the folder and pulled out a page from an unpublished novel, attributed to an "unknown author."
Slowly, she turned the page and began reading aloud:
"That night, not only the critic was murdered, but an entire sentence of language was murdered.11Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwTevwhJNe9
And someone had to reframe the crime so that the words could come to life."
At the end of her reading, she heard footsteps.
Slow but steady.
A thin man emerged from the shadows, his head covered by an old hat, his voice like dry wood:
"I knew you would understand the meaning... not just the killer."
Without turning around, she asked:
"Did you reenact the crime... or were you living inside it from the beginning?"
He was silent, then answered:
“I didn’t kill Leonard… I just wrote how he should die.”
Ella turned slowly.
There was no one there.
The sound of footsteps was real… but she was left alone.
Except for one thing.
On the floor where she had stuck the statue lay a new sheet of paper.
A single page of an unfinished novel.
Its title:
“The next chapter… is to be written by the reader.”
ns216.73.216.24da2
