Plot twist: Me

Blayde Rowan had always been a little… misplaced. Her teachers considered her “bright but challenged when it comes to focus,” her parents called her “a daydreamer”, and her two besties ( and also classmates) just called her “Blayde”. They liked her as she was, with all her talents and flaws.

Blayde would bounce from one obsession to the next with the force of a tropical storm, her mind racing faster than anyone could follow. And yet, she, being the first child of a single mom, grew up in a new country with her mom’s new partner, learnt a new language, and found ways to cope with the new world that welcomed her from day one at the age of 7.

Currently, being already 18, with one year left to graduate from high school, her two central fixations were Hirohiko Araki’s manga series, both in writing and animation, and Death Note, the graphic novel that had taught her two important life lessons: dark ink and high drama were an art form, and those notebooks could be far more potent than people assumed.

***

Drawing was Blayde’s safety net, her way of expression, the world she created, and the way she vented to reduce stress. Since the time she could hold a pencil.

Blayde's heart beat for art, with writing as her second love. Her dream was to become a comic artist, spinning tales as intricate and dramatic as the manga she loved. She wasn’t just good at drawing—she was brilliant. Her ink pen or soft, messy pencil sketches had gone viral on Instagram a few times, especially the ones of dramatic JoJo-style characters with exaggerated poses and shadowy eyes. This success motivated her to continue chasing her dream. But stories? Stories were harder.

Her neurodiverse brain didn't help. Writing meant organising ideas, and Blayde ’s brain wasn’t exactly known for its filing system. It was more like a blender.

Still, here she was, sitting in her room at 2:00 a.m., surrounded by open sketchbooks and a half-empty mug of liquorice and mint tea - her favourite.

Blayde’s hands were stained with a pleasantly soft 6B pencil, and her last sketch was of a young, fine man in a ragged coat, standing at the top of a destroyed town; his hair shone under her desk lamp.

“Alright! The end! This guy is gonna be my quantum leap!” she smirked and took a deep sigh, looking at her creation with a mix of admiration and a feeling of accomplishment.

His name’s Riven Duskwraith—half-villain, half-hero, full-on edgy. “I can already picture him screaming about fate and freedom in some dramatic fight scene."

***

She flipped open a new sketchbook, the one Ellen gave her as a birthday present. Her bestie told her she found it in a dusty, hole-in-the-wall loppemarket downtown. Its cover was cracked leather, with strange embossed patterns she couldn’t quite place—somewhere between alchemical symbols and eldritch runes. Blaybe loved it!!

She smiled and wrote at the top of the page in Anime Ace font

"Chapter 1: The Birth of Riven Duskwraith"

Her pencil danced across the paper, almost of its own accord. ADHD hyperfocus kicked in, and the words spilt out faster than she could process them. The thrill of creation was intoxicating, and she was lost in the world she was bringing to life.

Riven Duskwraith stood atop the Tophen Tower, the city glowing brightly behind him in the far distance. Zoned out and yet, in some sort of deep state of thinking, he demanded in a whisper, the shadows to rise”

Blayde stopped and stared through the window. What is this guy thinking at this very moment? She tried to imagine him as a real man, with feelings and thoughts that she could read. It was damn hard…

Blayde stared again at her sketch of Riven, observing his hair, the shading, and the technique, wondering what else was missing from the picture that truly represented his personality. For a split second, she could swear that she saw his eyes staring at her from the paper. Like real-life eyes!

She glanced over at her sketch of Riven, and for a flash, she could’ve sworn his eyes appeared slightly darker..

“Damn, im tired!” Blayde thought and stretched. It had been 4 hours since she was sitting in her chair.

She kept writing. It was too intriguing to stop now. She wanted to see what would happen next.”This is ridiculous, as if I’m reading it….”

"One flick of his wrist and that was it—the whole tower started crumbling, like it was just a loose thread waiting to come undone."

The walls of her bedroom vibrated faintly. Did they? She stopped, her heart thumping.

“…No way.”

Experimentally, she scribbled:

The wind just barged in like it owned the place and tossed the papers all over the floor.”

At once, a cold draft whipped through her slightly opened window, flinging her sketches on the floor.

Blayde stared at the carpet. The impossible had just happened, and she was left reeling from the shock.

“Bruh...”

She was suddenly very, very awake.

***

By sunrise, Blayde had tested the sketchbook on everything from the weather to her homework assignments ("Blayde Rowan’s algebra homework was miraculously completed and got an A+")—and it worked every time. No delay, no cost.

It was every high school student’s dream! Want your laundry folded? Write it down. Want pizza? Scribble it into existence.

But, of course, for Blayde, small stuff would soon become boring. She wanted to create worlds.

Shortly, her bedroom became a vortex of half-finished stories and chaotic experiments. She wrote entire cities into being—shadowy places filled with tragic anti-heroes and smug villains. But she always made sure they existed in their universe, never crossing into hers.

Until, of course, she got vain…

***.

It happened on a Saturday, around 3:00 a.m. (her usual creative peak).

Blayde sneaked into her room a small bag of stinky but yummy cheese crackers with a raspberry fizzy drink and fell deep into writing the next chapter of her Raven Duskwraith narrative.

This scene had to present something bold. And big.

Raven slowly appeared on the paper and soaked in the pleasant paper like spilt black tea. He was there to stay. Blayde stopped drawing and started gazing at the image. His eyes looked so real, as if she could see him breathing through his nostrils.

Blayde couldn’t hide the amusement and the feeling of entertainment at this time of the night. Silence and all the images in her head, flying around freely, with no one else around to bother her with demands and tasks from the physical world.

She closed her eyes and lay in her chair to rest her eyes. It was damn late. But she didn't want to stop. Not yet. Just a bit more.” The tea hasn’t finished yet. And tomorrow is Sunday anyway. It’s my summer vacay, god damn it”

While Blayde was in this calm state of mind, enjoying the timeless quality of the moment, the air felt heavy. She could see her lamp flickering for less than two seconds. It was both weird and exciting at the same time. Was there a shadow on the wall? Her heart stopped.

Then blinked. “Is he here?”

She paused.

He was there. Yes, he was. Looking at her, standing in the middle of the room. Tall and calm. Silent.

Blayde did not know what to do. She just froze.

Then Raven smiled. Or most likely smirked.

Damn, he looked exactly like her drawing.

" Blayde Rowan," he spoke in a voice that rumbled low, calm as a lullaby, but carrying just enough weight to make her skin crawl. ”We have to talk."

Blayde dropped her pencil. “Hell no.”

—

Turns out, there was a catch.

Raven wasn’t just a character—he was aware. He knew she’d written him, learned about the sketchbook, and knew how many times she’d casually controlled his fate for the sake of “storyline.”

Worse still, her impulsiveness meant she’d written him to be nearly unstoppable.

"Did you think you could create a god and chain him forever to paper?" he asked, circling her desk. There were footprints on her carpet, as if his shoes were slightly melting the texture.

Blayde’s thoughts were snapping from one to the other. She tried to breathe slowly, but the only thing she could feel was the heart pumping up as if trying to escape from the ribcage. “Blayde, focus, now you need to focus and think!”

“Okay, okay, so like, technically I can just write you away,” she blurted, grabbing the notebook.

"Try it," he said, smirking.

Her hand froze. Her ink pen wouldn’t move.

"The notebook obeys the rules you’ve written," Raven said, his smile widening. "And you wrote that I control shadows across all realms. That includes yours, creator."

Blayde licked her mouth nervously. “Is this a joke?”

"Nop!" He leaned closer, shadows curling around her wrists, binding her to her chair. "But don’t worry. Destroying you isn’t fun."

She stared at him, feeling the goosebumps on her spine crawl like bugs from the tailbone up to her hair.

He grinned. “It’s more fun if you write me a sequel.”

->

The weeks that followed were a blur of writing marathons and shadowy negotiations.

Raven let her live, but only if she kept writing his saga—feeding his power and expanding his empire across every fictional realm she touched. And as she wrote, he grew stronger, slipping between her world and the pages with increasing ease.

Yet if there was one thing sure about Blayde, it was her capricious nature…

One night, she pulled out her favourite fineliner—the same one she used for her JoJo fan art—and began sketching in the margins of the sketchbook. It was again after midnight.

She sketched out a new character—one even more histrionic than Raven. A flamboyant, absurdly overpowered anti‑hero: JoJo‑level muscle, tattoos that caught the light like living art, and sunglasses so intense they seemed to block out reality itself. She christened him Michelangelo de Vini, the Plot‑Hole Incarnate.

Her brain thrived on “artistic chaos”, so to speak, and Michelangelo was chaos incarnate. He had exactly one rule: he could undo anything for the sake of the plot’s "cool factor."

By the time Raven appeared again to check on her progress, it was too late.

“Meet Michelangelo,” Blayde grinned.

Raven’s smug smile faded as Michelangelo de Vini ripped his way out of the sketchbook, flexing so hard the walls cracked.

"TIME FOR A RETCON, BABY!" Michelangelo shouted while punching Raven so hard that he fell off the page, ripping it into pieces.

—

Raven sat back, laughing hysterically as her room returned to normal.

Her story wasn’t over…” If you’re going to write gods, always have a backup plan,” she thought while eating her leftovers of spinach pancakes with some raspberry jam.

Especially if that backup plan has sunglasses, muscles, and absolutely no regard for logic.

Did Michelangelo just whisper this in her ear?

Deep in the clutter of her desk drawer, the sketchbook gave off a faint thrum, like it knew its time was coming.

Blayde smirked and continued eating her pancakes, stopping once in a while and waiting for noises in her room.

“Bro…I guess we’re doing this again,” she muttered, waiting for the shadows to come again.