Inheritance Unwritten: A Magical Realism Short Story

For a struggling writer in Toronto, the deathbed of an estranged father becomes the setting for a haunting reckoning with identity, memory, and the stories we’re never told.

Sarah Martin has spent her adult life crafting fictional worlds to escape the silence of her own past. When a call from the hospital informs her that her biological father is dying, Sarah chooses presence over pride. What she finds isn’t just the fading shell of a man she’s hated from afar, but a quiet pull into the emotional terrain she’s tried so hard to forget.

As the sterile hospital walls blur into the imagined corridors of a crumbling fantasy kingdom, Sarah confronts a phantom king whose guilt mirrors the father who abandoned her.

Tender, lyrical, and laced with quiet magic, Inheritance Unwritten is a poignant meditation on forgiveness, family, and the power of story to heal what’s been left unsaid.