Night settled with a weight that pressed against the bones.
Mary stood at the edge of the ruined glade, her violet codex closed, held to her chest like a shield. The stars above were wrong. They shifted imperceptibly—constellations rearranged into symbols she knew but had never seen. Words in the sky. And not hers.
"She's writing again," she whispered.
Behind her, Loosie approached, silent but sure. The girl's eyes, once naive with wonder, now mirrored shadows far older. "The glyphs don't match the charts anymore," she said, voice low. "Even the moonlight bends different."
"Not just the sky," Mary said. "She's rewriting the rules."
Lela joined them, brushing moss and blood from her bracers. "Whatever you sealed at the Pillar, it's slowing her… but it's not stopping her."
Mary nodded. "The Rift is only one scar. The Codex told me of others—wounds across the fabric. Some hidden. Some guarded. But one… one is alive."
Cethan stirred behind them. He sat near the fire, hands clasped, rune-covered skin still glowing faintly. "I feel her," he said. "Like a whisper behind my ear. Every time I sleep."
"You're still tethered to the Rift," Loosie said, eyes narrowing.
"Not just tethered," Mary murmured. "He's linked. We severed his transformation, but the bridge remains. He might be the only one who can lead us to her."
Cethan looked up. "You want to use me as bait."
Mary shook her head. "No. As key."
Lela grunted. "So what's the next move? If this Author's out there redrawing stars, do we wait for her pen to finish?"
"No," Mary said, turning back to the glowing sky. "We go to the first word she ever wrote."
They set off before dawn. The path to the Obsidian Scriptorium wasn't marked on any map. Even the oldest tomes in Mary's possession—some older than kingdoms—spoke of it only in allegory.
A temple in the cliffs where stories bled from stone. Where language was born. Where a voice—perhaps the first—spoke reality into being.
Cethan guided them by instinct, or perhaps memory. The lines of his rune now shimmered blue instead of red, a signal Mary noted but kept quiet. Something was evolving in him. A balance—or a merging.
They passed through the Dead Forest, where trees wept ink from their bark, and crows whispered forgotten proverbs in reverse. Lela cut a path with her spear, her every step sure, and yet even she grew tense as the shadows deepened.
On the fifth night, they found the cliff.
It rose like the spine of a god, cracked and ridged, towering into the clouds. And at its center, a door of black stone with no handle. No keyhole. Only a single line etched across its face:
"What is written is not unmade."
Mary approached, her fingers trembling as they brushed the words.
The Codex vibrated.
A whisper echoed—not from the wind, but from the glyphs themselves.
"Speak the name of the first story."
Mary closed her eyes.
The Codex opened by itself, pages fluttering wildly before settling on one blank page. She touched the parchment and whispered:
"Light."
The door shuddered.
Cethan dropped to one knee, clutching his head. "She sees us," he gasped.
Loosie gripped his shoulder. "We're too close."
"No," Mary said. "We're exactly where she expects us to be."
The door split down the center, revealing a hall of shadow and shifting glyphs. Light bled from the walls—stories alive and screaming, twisting into new shapes, some beautiful, others horrifying.
Inside, the Scriptorium pulsed with presence.
And at its heart, sat the Chair of Origin.
The chamber was spherical. The walls were lined with runes etched in pure starlight. Floating tablets circled like satellites, each one engraved with an ancient word—Love. Death. Silence. War. Hope.
At the center stood a writing desk carved from obsidian and bone.
A chair rested before it—vacant, for now.
Mary approached. The closer she got, the heavier the air became. It wasn't pressure. It was narrative. Possibility. Every step threatened to write her into another self.
Loosie reached out, but Mary gestured for her to stop.
"This is the place where the first voice spoke," Mary said. "Where the first lie was written. Where truth was given a spine and chained to pages."
"And it's still alive," Cethan murmured. "I can feel it breathing."
The Codex floated from Mary's arms. Pages turned violently, and then stilled—on a page that had no ink. Instead, a single word burned into the fibers:
"Welcome."
The glyphs on the walls flared.
And then, from the chair, rose a silhouette.
She had no eyes, only silver flames where they should be. Her fingers were long, wrapped in scroll-ink and light. Her hair flowed like torn sentences, and her mouth smiled—but said nothing.
The Author had arrived.
Everyone froze.
Mary didn't breathe.
The Author raised a hand. The Codex dropped, slamming shut.
Cethan stepped forward, compelled.
The Author didn't attack. She simply gestured.
Words appeared in the air between them:
"You try to seal what was never meant to be sealed."
Mary steadied herself. "You're not welcome here."
Another word: "Neither were you. I wrote you, Mary. And I can erase you."
Mary lifted her hand.
The Codex flew to her, opening once again.
This time, she didn't whisper.
She shouted.
"TRUTH!"
The chamber shuddered. Runes cracked. One of the floating words—Silence—exploded in light.
The Author recoiled—but did not fall.
Instead, she smiled.
Her voice came not from her mouth but from the room itself.
"Good. You're learning to write back."
With a wave, she vanished.
The chair remained.
The desk.
And one new word now hovered in the air.
"Soon."
Outside the Scriptorium, the sky had split again.
A new rift.
But this time, it wasn't random.
It pointed due north.
To a mountain Mary had only ever seen in dreams.
And beneath the rift, floating in the air like a page torn from prophecy, was a single sentence written in blood:
"The Final Chapter Begins."