They arrive without footsteps.
Only red pens.
And silence.
Not dramatic. Not cruel.
Just… professional.
Three beings. Robed in gray. Their faces blank, but their hands ink-stained.
The Editors.
"Elóranth," the tallest one says, adjusting his cuffs.
"Your arc has gone off-course."
She doesn't bow. Doesn't flinch.
"Good," she says. "I'm not here to be consumed. I'm here to create."
"We allowed your divergence," the second Editor murmurs, "within market-tested parameters. A villainess who grows. A redemption with catharsis. Pain, yes but framed with hope."
The third flips through a glowing manuscript her story.
"But this," he snaps the book shut, "is chaos."
Elóranth steps forward, her shadow long, her magic whispering.
"No. This is honesty. Raw, unedited, divine."
"Honest doesn't sell," Editor One says flatly.
"It alienates."
She understands, now.
They don't hate her.
They fear her.
Because she refuses to fit.
To arc.
To please.
She doesn't cry prettily.
She doesn't choose love over power.
She doesn't ask to be liked.
"You were a subplot," Editor Three says, circling.
"Meant to die. A side flavor. A tragedy that made the heroine shine brighter."
"I became the story," Elóranth replies.
They attack not with blades or spells.
But with edits.
Scenes around her vanish.
Chapters rewrite themselves.
Backstory bleeds.
The page beneath her feet tries to flatten her into something simpler.
But her magic?
Isn't fire anymore.
It's authorship.
And she writes back.
One word, spoken like thunder:
"No."
The sentence they tried to cut the part of her that never sold, never tested well, never fit erupts into light.
She wields the very thing they fear
An audience that loves her despite the rules.
Despite the marketing.
Despite the structure.
The Editors stumble, glitching.
One gasps:
"Who gave you permission to be this—this unprofitable?"
She smiles.
"I did. When I stopped begging for applause… and started writing with blood."
And with that, she doesn't kill them.
She edits them.
Turns gods of perfection into drafts.
Erased by the power of an author who no longer wants to be beautiful.
Only true.