The Author of Ruins
A short story written by Matt Gardner with PlotWeaver: Cards of Creation, a storytelling game made by Mod Hob Cooperative.
This story uses a Non-Linear Plot Pattern, written in 20-minute timed acts with all story cards drawn at random. For more information, visit www.plotweavergame.com
Act 1: Disjointed Events or Perspectives
Story Element Cards: The Shadow, The Innocent, Ancient Ruins, Childhood Bedroom, and Horror
The wind moves differently through the ruins at night. Not quite passing through, but lingers.
Olga stands where the throne room once was, though no throne remains. Only fractured stone, swallowed by vines, and the faint outline of something that used to matter. She runs her fingers along the cracks as if they were veins, as if the empire still had a pulse beneath the moss.
“They’ve forgotten,” she whispers.
Something shifts in the shadows behind her, but it does not startle her. It never has.
She does not turn, nor pay it any mind.
Topher lies on his stomach, feet kicking idly in the air, a book open in front of him.
“The empire lasted for over three hundred years…”, he snorts, “three hundred years of that?” he mutters, flipping the page. “Why didn’t they just… leave?”
His room is warm. Safe. The glow of a bedside lamp softens everything: the edges of his desk, the pile of toys in the corner, the half-finished drawing of a castle that looks nothing like the one in his book.
He glances at the illustration of the tall, crumbling towers with dark windows, and squints, “Looks creepy,” he mutters.
As Olga kneels at the base of a collapsed archway, she notices that the stones are arranged differently here. Not random like it had fallen, but placed with purpose.
She brushes away dirt and debris with her old brush, revealing markings carved deep into the rock. Symbols that no longer belong to any living tongue.
She gasps as she catches her breath. “They were here,” she says.
The air tightens, as the shadows stretch unnaturally long, bending toward her, as if listening.
“You see?” she murmurs, her voice trembling now, not with fear, but devotion. “It wasn’t abandonment. It was betrayal.”
The darkness behind her deepens.
Topher pulls his blanket tighter around his shoulders, shivering; he hadn’t noticed that the room got colder.
He flips back a few pages, and there is a section he skipped before.
“Some believed the empire did not fall, but was instead… preserved.”
He pauses, “Preserved where?”
The illustration on the page is different from the others. Less detailed. Almost… unfinished.
A shadowy figure stands in the ruins. Topher leans closer, “…That’s weird.”
Olga closes her eyes, and for a moment, she is no longer in the ruins.
The walls are whole again, and the torches burn bright, as voices echo through the halls. Laughter, arguments, life! She stands among them, unseen but present.
“They are still here,” she insists as the vision flickers, and the warmth drains, only for the ruins to return, and with them, the silence.
Topher peeks up from his book; he could’ve sworn someone said something.
There was nothing in the hallway, nor downstairs. As he got closer to his room, he turned slowly toward his bedroom door. It was wide open when he left, and now it was almost closed. Just enough for the darkness beyond to feel… intentional.
He stares into the crack, hesitant, and nothing moves. He laughs nervously and shakes his head, “Just my imagination.”
Olga turns this time to see the shadow, not because she is afraid, but because something has changed. The shadow behind her is no longer still, standing tall, almost shifting forward, stretching along the ground, reaching toward her feet.
She smiles, “You’ve been waiting too,” she says softly.
Topher closes the book; he doesn’t like the last page, as it doesn’t end properly. No conclusion or explanation, just a final line: “Some ruins are not abandoned. They are remembered.”
He frowns, “That doesn’t even make sense.”
As he sets the book down, he notices something he’s never seen before.
On the cover, there is a faint outline, not printed, more pressed in, as if something had been there… and left its mark. A figure, standing in the ruins, just watching.
Act 2: Events Connect or Merge
Story Element Cards: Puzzling Events
Topher doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he must have, because he is no longer in his bedroom.
The air is damp and cold as he stands barefoot on uneven stone, the ground slick with moss and something darker beneath it. The ruins stretch around him, larger than they ever seemed in the book; they were too large, too real.
“Hello?” he calls, as his voice echoes, but not quite right; it is as if something is echoing back… slightly out of sync.
Olga hears a voice that does not belong. Young, soft and deeply uncertain.
Her breath catches as she turns toward the sound, her eyes scanning the broken corridors.
“They’re not supposed to come here,” she whispers, as the shadow at her feet stirs.
Topher takes a step forward, and then another. His heart beats faster, not from fear exactly, but from the sense that he is somewhere he shouldn’t be… and yet somehow was meant to find.
“I was just reading…” he mutters to himself, as his foot hits something.
A book.
He looks down, and it’s his book, the same worn edges and faint mark on the cover, but when he picks it up, it feels heavier, and older… much older. He flips it open, and the pages are no longer printed; they appear handwritten, and the ink is still wet.
Olga approaches slowly; she can see the boy now. Not as a memory, his clothing is strange, and definitely not a vision, just a strange boy. Standing where no one should stand.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she says, her voice calm, but it carries something deeper.
Topher looks up, “Wait, you’re… from the book,” he says, confused.
Olga tilts her head, “The book?”
Topher holds it out, “You’re right here,” he says, flipping to a page.
But when Olga looks, she doesn’t see herself; she only sees the ruins, the carvings in the moment she uncovered them, and beneath it, in careful script, it reads, “She believes the empire was betrayed.”
Olga steps back, “No,” she says quietly. “That hasn’t happened yet.”
The wind moves through the ruins again, but now it carries whispers, fragments of voices layered over one another.
Topher presses his hands to his ears, “Do you hear that?” he asks.
Olga does not answer, as she recognizes the voices; for her, they are not echoes of the past, but they are possibilities. The daily things that could be remembered, or forgotten. The common patterns were benign and routine.
Topher flips another page; this time, his hands are shaking. The next entry is shorter and more frantic.
“The boy is here. He doesn’t understand what he’s holding,” he read as he looked up at Olga.
“I didn’t write this,” he says.
Olga steps slowly closer, carefully, her eyes never leaving the book.
“You’re not reading history,” she says, “You’re… making it.”
The shadow stretches between them, much longer and deeper than before. Pooling beneath the boy’s feet, then curling back toward Olga like a tether being pulled too tight.
Topher gasps as the floor beneath him flickers, and for a brief moment, he sees his bedroom.
The soft light, the familiar walls.
Then it’s gone, in a flash, and replaced by stone and decay.
Olga reaches out, not to the boy, but to grab the book, “That doesn’t belong to you,” she snaps.
Topher pulls it back instinctively, “It’s mine,” he insists.
But even as he says it, he’s not sure, because he now remembers something he hadn’t before, not reading the book, but finding it at the foot of his bed on a night he couldn’t sleep, a night when the room felt colder than it should have.
As the whispers grew louder, the ruins trembled, and somewhere, far away, in a quiet, empty bedroom, a lamp flickers.
Olga softens her voice; she knew that she had panicked the boy, “If you keep reading,” she says, “you won’t be able to leave.”
Topher looks down at the page as the new words form, slowly and deliberately, capturing what Olga just said.
“He is beginning to understand,” The shadow says as it rises, “it might be too late.”
The shadow no longer behind Olga stood between them, and for the first time, it did not feel like something she controlled.
Topher looks up, “Is this… real?” he asks.
Olga hesitates, for the first time in a long time, then, quietly, she says, “It is, if you believe it enough to stay.”
The ruins breathe, as the bedroom waits, and the story is no longer separate from the one reading it.
Act 3: Final Intersection or Connection
Story Element Cards: Betrayal Revealed
Topher stumbles back, clutching it to his chest as the pages begin to turn on their own.
Faster and faster, as ink starts bleeding into words before his eyes can follow.
“Make it stop,” he says, his voice cracking.
Olga doesn’t move; she’s transfixed on the shadow, not with fear, but with recognition.
“It’s not happening to you,” she says quietly, “You’re feeding it.”
The ruins tremble, as stone shifts and the vines recoil, as the air thickens as though the world itself is holding its breath.
Topher shakes his head. “I didn’t do anything!” but the book pulses in his hands, as if it were warm and alive.
Olga steps closer.
“You think this is a story you found,” she says. “Something old. Something finished.” Her voice hardens, “It isn’t.”
The shadow stretches toward Topher’s feet again, wrapping around his ankles like ink spilling across the floor.
He tries to pull away, but the ground beneath him flickers, between the bedroom and the ruins, as the two spaces collapse into one another.
His bed appears behind him, half-buried in stone, as his lamp flickers beside a broken column.
The walls of his room fracture, revealing endless corridors of the ruins beyond.
“No…” Topher whispers.
Olga kneels in front of him, and for the first time, she looks… tired.
“You asked why they didn’t leave,” she says softly.
Topher freezes as a memory flashes into his mind. A memory that isn’t his, it’s a boy in a different room. He is older, and he is writing by dim light.
Angry.
“They deserve to be forgotten,” the boy mutters, scratching words into a journal. “All of it. It’s wrong. It’s broken.” He writes faster and more forcefully.
“They don’t change. They don’t listen. They cling to what was.” The ink presses deep into the page, “I’ll write something better.”
Topher gasps as the memory shatters.
“That’s not me,” he says, his voice is weaker and less certain.
Olga studies him, “ but it was,” she says, “Just… not yet.”
The shadow surges upward, not toward Olga, but toward the book in Topher’s hands.
“You didn’t discover us,” Olga continues, “You rewrote us.”
The pages stop turning, with only one page remaining open; it’s the final entry.
Topher looks down, slowly, reading words he does not remember writing: “The empire was not betrayed by its people, it was abandoned by its author.”
His breath catches.
“You didn’t like what we were,” Olga says, “You thought we were backwards. Wrong. Something to be fixed.”
Her voice trembles, not with fear, but something deeper, “You erased us.”
The ruins groan as cracks splinter outward, and the bedroom ceiling caves slightly, dust falling onto Topher’s shoulders.
“I was the last one left,” Olga says, “I stayed.”
The shadow pulls tighter around Topher’s arms, not restraining.
Binding.
“I became what you needed me to be,” she continues. “A mystery. A warning. A story worth finishing.”
Topher shakes his head, tears forming, “I didn’t mean…”
“No,” Olga interrupts gently, “You didn’t.”
The shadow rises behind him now, taking shape… his shape.
Older, colder, holding a pen as the realization lands all at once.
The shadow was never hers; it was his. Every fear. Every judgment. Every assumption about a world he never understood was given form, a power even.
“You thought you were innocent,” Olga says, “But innocence isn’t the absence of harm.”
The shadow-self steps forward, placing a hand over Topher’s and guiding it.
The book opens wider, and a blank page lies waiting.
“You can finish it,” Olga says, “Or you can undo it.”
The ruins begin to collapse inward, as the bedroom tears apart at the seams as both realities unravel.
Topher looks between Olga… and the shadow. Between what he believed… and what he created.
“What happens if I stop?” he asks.
Olga holds his gaze. “For us?” she says quietly. “We disappear.”
The shadow tightens its grip, and the pen presses into his fingers.
“And if I keep writing?”
Olga’s expression softens, “Then we live,” she says, “But only as you see us.”
Silence.
Except for the sound of everything falling apart.
Topher closes his eyes, and for a moment, he sees both worlds clearly, not as separate, but as one.
A misunderstood past, and a present miswritten.
He inhales and lets go of the pen.
The shadow fractures, splitting into a thousand pieces of darkness that dissolve into nothing.
The book slams shut as the ruins stop collapsing, and the bedroom goes still.
Olga stands alone, Topher is now gone, and for a long moment, there is only silence.
A soft wind moves through the ruins, this time not lingering, just passing.
Olga kneels where the book once was, but there is nothing there now.
No ink, nor tall shadow, and the little author… gone.
She is left with only the ruins, as they are, and for the first time, she smiles, not because she was remembered, but because she no longer needs to be.
Far away in a quiet bedroom, a child wakes. There is no book at the foot of the bed, no memory of ruins, only a strange feeling… like something important was almost lost, and then released.
And somewhere beyond both memory and imagination, a story ends.
Not rewritten, or erased, but left alone.