The night before the raid, Barry couldn’t sleep.

Not because of fear. Fear was useful. Fear was a torch you held up to the dark so it didn’t get comfortable.

No, Barry couldn’t sleep because the camp was a mess.

In the goblin tunnel-hall they’d claimed as “base,” bedrolls lay like defeated flags. A pot of stew had fused to a cooking stone. Somebody’s boots were upside down, which meant tomorrow someone would swear the boots were cursed, and then the boots would become cursed because that’s how rumors worked when you were adventuring.

Barry squatted on a crate and slapped his clipboard down like a judge delivering a sentence.

IMPORTANT QUESTS

• ? Count torches
• ? Count torches AGAIN because thieves exist
• ? Find who stole my good rock
• ? Raid tomorrow
• ? Don’t die (optional)
• ? INVENT PROBLEM SO WE CAN SOLVE IT

That was the trick. That was the secret sauce of Barry’s brain. If the world was going to throw surprises, he’d throw them first. That way, when chaos arrived, he could point at the clipboard and yell, “SEE? PLANNED.”

He clicked the charcoal into the metal clip and froze.

The clip was cold. Cold like winter metal. Cold like the air right before lightning chooses a tree.

The page under the clip moved on its own.

Barry stared at it. The campfire popped. Somewhere, a rat made a tiny, judgmental noise. The page moved again, slowly, like a hand sliding a knife from a sleeve.

Letters formed, not in Barry’s charcoal, but in ink so dark it seemed to drink the firelight.

Barry swallowed. His throat did the thing it did when the world was about to change its mind.

“No. No, no. Not tonight. Tonight is inventory. Tomorrow is dying heroically and then bragging.”

The clipboard did not care.

Barry’s grin twitched, tried to become a joke, failed, and slunk away.

The shadows around the edges of the tunnel-hall thickened. Not darkness, exactly. More like the absence of permission.

A wind slid through the cavern without touching the fire. The flame didn’t bend. It stiffened, as if it had been reprimanded.

Then the collectors arrived.

They stepped out of the wall like someone had opened a door in reality and forgotten to tell reality it didn’t have doors there.

Three of them.

The first wore a porcelain mask with a smiling mouth and no eyes. The second wore a mask with eyes and no mouth. The third’s mask was blank, but the blankness felt like being watched by an entire courtroom.

They were dressed in layered coats that looked stitched from old contracts, map scraps, and the skin of promises. Their hands were gloved, their fingers too long, their movements perfectly polite. Every step they took made the air smell faintly of ink and rain.

The one with the smiling mouth bowed.

“Barik Scrapledger,” it said.

Barry’s stomach turned over. It didn’t turn over like nausea. It turned over like the world had said his full name out loud and now it was written somewhere important.

Nobody called him Barik. Not anymore. Barik was the name you used when you were in trouble, or when someone wanted to own you.

Barry stood, slow, like he was negotiating with his own bones.

“Barry,” he corrected. “Nickname. Easier. Efficient. Friendly. Barik is… for paperwork.”

The collector’s smile did not change.

“We are paperwork.”

The one with eyes and no mouth lifted a gloved hand and pointed at the clipboard. Its finger did not tremble. It did not accuse. It simply indicated a fact.

“That item,” the smiling collector said, “is not yours.”

Barry’s grip tightened on the clipboard. He could feel the wood under his fingers. He could feel the dents where it had been hit, dropped, kicked, survived. He could feel his own sweat staining the edges.

“It’s mine,” Barry said, and the words came out harsher than he meant. “I found it.”

The blank-masked collector tilted its head. When it spoke, its voice had no tone, which somehow made it worse.

“You stole it.”

Barry’s ears burned. He wanted to deny it. He wanted to shout. He wanted to do anything except stand there while three impossible strangers pointed at his life and listed his crimes like an inventory.

But the truth was a rock in his mouth.

He had taken the clipboard from the courier guild foreman after the foreman had kicked him down a flight of tunnel stairs for misrouting a package. Barry had taken it because it felt good to take something back. Because a clipboard meant authority. Because holding paper made him feel less like a goblin and more like a person who got to decide what mattered.

He had stolen the clipboard.

He had not known it was alive.

He had not known it was a ledger.

He had not known it belonged to the Fey.

The smiling collector took a half-step forward. The air got colder. The fire hissed, not from wind, but from fear.

“Your debt is due,” it said. “Payment options are available.”

“Options?” Barry echoed. His voice tried to become sarcasm again. It came out thin. “How generous.”

The one with eyes and no mouth produced a scroll that unrolled by itself, spilling down like a waterfall of tiny text. Barry’s gaze flicked across it, saw his own scribbles mirrored there, but transformed. Checkboxes became clauses. Doodles became sigils. Grudges became binding terms.

The smiling collector’s head tilted, as if listening to a distant laugh track only it could hear.

“You have used the ledger to assign purpose. To create narrative pressure. To bind others into your quests. In doing so, you have accrued… interest.”

Barry’s campmates slept in the background. One of them snored softly, unaware that the universe had opened a file on them.

Barry’s jaw clenched. His hands shook once, hard.

“Leave them out,” he said.

“They are already in.”

The air shifted again. The sleeping forms by the fire flickered, just for a moment, like bad reflections. As if the collectors could, with the right signature, erase someone’s place in the world the way you erase ink from a page.

Barry’s rage rose.

It wasn’t a shout yet. It was a pressure. A thickening behind his eyes. The familiar crackle of a storm building in his ribs.

He could feel it, that Wild Magic thing, the part of him that did not do what it was told. The part of him that turned feelings into weather.

He held it back, just a second longer, because his brain, for all its chaos, could still do math.

Three collectors. Unknown powers. Party asleep. Firelight. Tight cavern.

Bad fight.

Very bad fight.

Barry glanced down at the clipboard.

The ink wrote.

Barry’s breath caught.

He looked up, forcing his face into a grin that was more teeth than joy.

“Okay,” he rasped. “Okay. We do this like civilized monsters. You want payment, I want terms.”

The smiling collector bowed again.

“Proceed.”

Barry lifted the clipboard like a shield.

“My terms,” he said, “are simple.”

He tapped the top of the page with his finger.

“One: You do not touch my people. Two: You do not touch my camp. Three: You do not touch my… stuff.”

A rat chose that moment to sprint over a pile of coins and vanish into a crack. The sound of tiny claws on gold echoed like laughter.

The collector with eyes and no mouth angled its head toward Barry, as if curious whether he understood how ridiculous he sounded.

Barry barreled on.

“Four: You take payment from me. Me only. Not them. Not the world. Not the boots. The boots are innocent.”

The blank collector spoke.

“Acceptable.”

Barry blinked. “Wait, really?”

The smiling collector nodded.

“Your debt is yours.”

Barry’s chest tightened. Agreement was dangerous. Agreement meant the trap was hidden in the wording.

He swallowed and forced himself to read the ink again.

That word hit like a fist.

Not a name.

Your name.

The part of you that made you you. The part that made your voice belong to your mouth, your memories belong to your mind, your choices belong to your hands.

Barry’s grin faltered.

He had spent his whole life being underestimated, overlooked, called “goblin” like it was a synonym for “problem.” He had fought for scraps, fought for respect, fought for the right to decide what mattered.

He had stolen a clipboard so he could write his own importance into the world.

And now the world wanted his name back.

Barry’s hand tightened on the spiked club at his side. The club hummed with the leftover taste of violence. It wanted to be used. It always did.

He looked at the sleeping party.

He thought of all the times he’d made their lives harder by inventing problems, just so he could feel useful solving them.

He thought of the times they’d laughed anyway. The times they’d fed him anyway. The times they’d said, “Barry, stop,” and then still let him sit close to the fire.

Barry’s eyes stung. He hated that. He hated being soft. Soft got you killed.

He lifted the club.

“Okay,” he said, voice low. “But if you’re taking my name, you’re gonna have to earn it.”

The smiling collector did not move.

“We have.”

Barry inhaled.

And let go.

Rage slammed into him like a door kicked open. His vision sharpened, edges glowing. The air around him crackled. His skin prickled with electricity that wasn’t quite lightning but wanted to be.

Wild Magic surged.

A burst of glittering sparks erupted from his shoulders like a fireworks sneeze. The sparks hung in the air, then folded into tiny paper butterflies that flapped in perfect formation around his head.

“PLANNED!” Barry howled.

He charged.

The spiked club swung toward the smiling mask.

The collector lifted one gloved hand, and the air between them turned into a wall of ink. Not liquid ink, but ink as a concept. It caught the club mid-swing with a soft, polite thunk.

The butterflies froze.

Gravity hiccuped.

For one heartbeat, everything in the tunnel hall floated: coins, dust, Barry’s hair, the rat that had chosen a terrible moment to reappear. The campfire flame became a perfect sphere, suspended.

Barry’s rage didn’t care. His rage had never cared.

He yanked the club back, snarling, muscles screaming. The ink wall stretched like taffy. For a second, Barry thought he had it.

Then the ink snapped back and flung him sideways.

He hit the ground hard enough to make his teeth click.

The collectors didn’t rush him. They didn’t need to. They waited with the calm of people who knew the outcome had already been written.

Barry pushed himself up on one elbow. The butterflies around his head dissolved into soot. His clipboard scraped against the stone.

The ink wrote again.

Barry’s heart hammered. He glanced at the sleeping party again.

One of them stirred, frowning, as if sensing danger through a dream. Another muttered Barry’s nickname like it was a comfort word.

Barry’s throat tightened.

He looked at the collectors, then at the clipboard.

His rage roared, but beneath it there was something steadier.

Choice.

Barry grabbed the clipboard with both hands and held it up like a proclamation.

“Fine,” he rasped. “You want my name? Take it. Take Barik. Take Scrapledger. Take the whole fancy label.”

The collectors leaned in, the air thick with ink-scent and inevitability.

Barry’s eyes burned as he forced the next words out.

“But you don’t get to take Barry.”

The smiling collector’s porcelain mouth did not change, but something in the air shifted, like surprise written in invisible ink.

“Clarify,” it said.

Barry’s grin returned, smaller now, fierce as a knife.

“Barry is mine,” he said. “Barry is what they call me. Barry is… what I earned.”

The blank collector was still for a long moment.

Then it said, “Names are names.”

Barry shook his head violently, hair whipping, sparks jumping from his skin.

“No. One is ownership. One is belonging. You take the ownership name. You leave the belonging name.”

He jabbed a finger at the clipboard so hard the wood creaked.

“And I want a clause.”

The collector with eyes and no mouth lifted the endless scroll, as if waiting.

Barry’s voice came out rough and sharp.

“If you take my name, you also take my debt. All of it. Every quest I wrote that pulled them in, every box I checked, every stupid invented problem.”

The butterflies came back, but now they were made of ash, fluttering like burnt paper.

Barry breathed, shaking.

“You take it,” he repeated. “You take it and you choke on it. And you leave them alone.”

The collectors didn’t answer right away.

Silence filled the tunnel-hall, heavy enough to crush a torch.

Then the blank collector spoke, and for the first time, its voice had the faintest hint of something like respect.

“Accepted.”

The clipboard’s ink surged.

It crawled up Barry’s fingers, not cold now but hot, like touching lightning. It wrapped around his wrists, spiraled up his arms, slid over his chest. It climbed toward his throat.

Barry gasped, not in pain, but in the strange sensation of being un-written.

Memories flickered.

A tunnel. A foreman’s boot. The clipboard stolen. A laugh, bitter and bright. A first checkbox. A first time someone called him Barry without venom.

The ink reached his mouth.

The collectors leaned close.

“Barik Scrapledger,” the smiling one whispered, and the name hit Barry like a hook under the ribs, pulling it out of him.

Barry screamed.

The sound cracked the air. The campfire burst into a spray of harmless light, like a million tiny stars thrown into the tunnel. The sleeping party jolted awake, shouting, grabbing weapons, eyes wide.

They saw Barry on his knees, glowing with ink and starlight, three masked figures standing over him like executioners.

They saw the clipboard in his hands, the words IMPORTANT QUESTS bleeding into something older and darker.

And they heard Barry, through clenched teeth, roaring one last time:

“STILL PLANNED!”

The ink snapped.

The name tore free.

The collectors stepped back, as if completing a transaction.

Barry collapsed forward, gasping, shaking, alive.

His party rushed to him.

“Barry!” someone shouted, grabbing his shoulders. “Barry, what did they do?”

Barry blinked up at them. His eyes were clear. Too clear. Like someone had wiped a smudge off a lens and now the world hurt to look at.

He opened his mouth.

For a heartbeat, nothing came out.

Not because he couldn’t speak.

Because there was a hole in the place where certain sounds used to live.

He swallowed. He smiled, small and shaky, and pointed at his own chest.

“Barry,” he managed. “I’m Barry.”

Someone asked, “What’s your real name?”

Barry frowned. He looked down at the clipboard. The page was blank now, except for a single line of fresh ink.

Barry’s grin widened, sudden and feral, because some habits survived even the theft of a name.

“Uh,” he said. “Good news.”

“What good news?” someone demanded.

Barry held up the clipboard.

“We got a new quest.”

The party stared at him.

Barry tapped the blank line where the ink had written.

His eyes flicked toward the tunnel wall where the collectors had vanished, and for a second, something like fear crossed his face. Something deep and quiet.

Then he swallowed it.

He always did.

He checked a box that wasn’t there and said, “PLANNED.”

And somewhere in the dark, beyond the walls, the sound of ink moving over paper began again.

Image and story by ChatGPT 5.2