The rift above the mountain pulsed as they crested the final ridge. Its heartbeat echoed through Mary's bones—urgent, insistent, written in ink and fire. They stood on the snowy summit of Mount Thesrel, the air thin and biting, snow crunching beneath heavy boots. Below lay nothingness: a vast swirl where mountains once stood, now replaced by the chasm's black maw.
"This is it," Mary whispered, voice strained by altitude and fate. The violet tome, ever at her hip, flared with every heartbeat.
Loosie crouched, wind-flattening her hair. "It's beautiful."
Mary closed her eyes. "Beautiful means ending. And begins." She brushed a fingertip over the rune-of-Rift binding etched across the mountain's surface.
Lela hoisted her spear, eyes narrowed. "We're about to walk into the Author's next chapter."
Mary nodded. "Or our final chapter—with a chance to write the end ourselves."
They descended to the summit plateau, swirling wind scattering snow into drifting glyphs. The plateaus' center held a triangular altar—black stone bulging like a wound from the mountain's heart. Around it, rune-inscribed markers sunk into ice. Moonlight glowed down from the hovering rift, lighting each blade of ice and stone with unnatural silver.
The altar's surface was radiant-cleaved, as if a blade had been dragged across it. In its center, carved into stone, a single slot—the shape of an Author's quill.
Mary approached. Each step echoed her purpose.
"Mary," Lela said softly, "there's no turning back once you open the Final Chapter."
Mary inhaled. The codex trembled at her side. "I know."
She knelt, placing the pale violet book onto the altar. Its pages fluttered open to the final blank page—page one hundred twenty-four.
"Here," the Author's whisper echoed from the rift above. "Write. Or perish."
Mary looked up to the floating fragment of prophecy: "The Final Chapter Begins."
Below, her family—Lela, Loosie, Cethan—stood firm.
Despite wind so cold it numbed breath, Mary's lips moved.
"I write to close the door. To end the story."
Light dripped from her pen-tip—ink she formed from her blood, her codex's essence. Her vampiric venom—ancient, divine—mixed with blood-red script.
To her left, Lela scanned the summit edge. "Cultists forming."
To her right, Loosie squatted, loading warded grenades, the runes glinting faint blue.
Mary's veins pulsed in sync with the rift. Her writing's pace was agonizingly precise, each sinew of memory and will dedicated to the final runes she carved.
"…and for every path once broken, I set right the final gates…"
The air convulsed. Ice cracked. The rift brightened.
The Author stepped through, descending on fractal wings like cut pages. She wore a gown of drifting script. In one hand she held that spectral quill—the Author's quill.
Her voice reverberated: "Bold. Foolish. Touching."
Mary didn't pause. Another line.
"…so the broken may be whole; so the void may learn to hold life."
Cold light bathed her fingertips as she slid the book into the quill's slot. The codex hummed. The Author glided closer, wings rustling like turning pages.
Lela roared and charged, spear ablaze. The Author smiled, scaling the wind and deflecting every strike with glyphs that bloomed from her robe like living script. Lela staggered back.
Loosie lobbed a warded orb. It exploded in geometric glyph arcs—but the Author caught them, folding each rune into the swirling gown until they vanished.
Mary's writing faltered.
The Author stepped to the altar. "Let me finish it—let me end it."
Mary's hand trembled. "You… have no right."
The Author's quill glowed. "I wrote you too. I birthed the Rift. I spilled the blood on this mountain."
Mary nearly collapsed—but her daughter's voice echoed: Mom, you're the author now.
She rose. The pen-tip touched the final line.
"By pen and blood, by word and blade, so ends this book. So begins the world anew."
Light erupted.
The quill ignited. The codex burned with latent flame. The mountain splits groaned.
The Author screamed—voice rippling like ink in water. She lunged, gripping the altar, quill slashing toward Mary's cheek—
—but Mary's blood-red script spread like crystal veins across the altar, binding the quill's slot.
Lela found her spear at Mary's side. Together, they stood.
The Author's wings started to crumble—pages tearing away.
"You—can't—write me—out!"
Mary whispered: "You're not a god. You're just a story."
With a final stroke, the script sealed the slot. The quill shattered. Ink dripped from the Author's lips. She looked at Mary with something like gratitude.
Then dissolved—letters curling into wind, scattered across the ice and into the rift.
The hovering rift shuttered. Angles filled. Glyphs carved themselves across the summit. Page one hundred twenty-four sealed.
Mary sank, exhausted.
Lela caught her.
Loosie joined.
Cethan knelt, pulling his rune-bound arm over his torso, steadily weeping.
Mary lay across the altar. Light faded. Stars disappeared.
Silence drained.
Then—
"Mother," Loosie whispered.
Mary raised her eyes—only stone, snow, and drifting runes remained.
She exhaled.
They helped her sit. The cracked altar held them all.
Together.
They stayed until sunrise, the sun cresting over healed mountains. Clouds dispersed. Streams streamed. Trees whispered awake.
In the valley below, the Crimson Alliance emerged—cheers that caught on mountain ridges, hearts hesitating to believe.
Mary stepped away from the altar, the violet codex in her arms. Each rune glowed faintly—written. Sealed.
Lela and Loosie stood by her side.
Cethan approached, eyes gleaming. He lay on his arm, and Mary touched his rune—it shimmered yet steady. "You're free."
Cethan smiled. "We all are."
They left the summit walking slowly—daughter, sister, friend, protector.
The mountain behind them sighed, runes dissolving into sunlight.
In the rift's place: only blue sky.
Below: a world ready to be written anew.