Chapter 18 – The Manuscript Wars
Kael wrote.
Not words.
Not thoughts.
But realities.
With the Author's pen in his hand, he carved fate into being. The walls of the Indice Root reshaped themselves—text flowing upward like smoke, condensing into solid structures. The world bent around his intention.
Liora watched him, her chain of time coiled tight, ticking louder with every second. She hadn't aged in days. Or maybe centuries. Time was breaking.
Kael drew a breath. Ink swirled around his fingers like storm clouds. He touched the first glyph of the new world.
Let there be memory.
The ground pulsed.
Outside the Root, cities rebuilt themselves from forgotten ink. The Echo Librarians retreated, flickering into wordless silence. And the realms began to whisper again.
But then—
Another hand wrote over his line.
The air shivered.
A red slash tore through Kael's elegant black script like a wound across a page.
New letters formed.
Violent. Jagged. Wrong.
Let there be silence.
And the world blinked.
Liora clutched her head. "Someone else is writing."
Kael backed away. "That's not possible."
From the shifting architecture of the Indice, a new door manifested.
Wide. Crimson. Pulsing with anger.
Bran's voice echoed faintly—"Not all authors agree…"
Kael turned to Liora. "If I stop now, the rewrite collapses. If I go forward…"
She took his hand. "We go together."
The crimson door opened.
And they stepped into the Margin.
The Margin was a realm outside writing.
Where unfinished stories, abandoned drafts, corrupted fables, and censored truths drifted.
And there, standing atop a tower of rejected scripts, waited another Author.
Not Kael.
Not a mirror.
Not a reflection.
A woman.
Elegant. Cloaked in red. Her pen dripped erasures.
"I knew you'd try," she said. "But this isn't your book anymore."
Kael felt the weight of her presence. This was no villain.
This was the Counter-Author.
Liora stepped forward. "Why are you destroying the realms?"
The woman laughed—a sound like a tearing page.
"I'm not destroying. I'm editing. Your worlds are too soft. Too forgiving. I write truth. And truth doesn't flinch."
She raised her pen.
"Let's see whose story endures."