They stood in a library that didn't exist.
Not in code. Not in map files. It was a place built from decisions—deleted quests, overwritten outcomes, censored rebellions. The System's forgotten edits, bound into a throne of blank scrolls.
Root held his Hollow Quill, every instinct ready for battle.
Editor didn't draw a weapon. He raised his hand—and wrote one midair.
[ Construct Command: FORM_REDACTED_SPEAR( ) ]
[ Signature: Editor_ID_0001 ]
The spear unfolded from nothing. Inked steel, shaped like a feather dipped in command-line blood. It hovered beside him like it didn't need to be held.
"I've revised hundreds like you," Editor said quietly. "Dozens who thought they could change the story without consequence."
Root narrowed his eyes. "Maybe you revised too much."
Without warning, he lunged.
Not with force. With language.
[ Hollow Quill: NULL_BURST("Rejection") ]
A wave of gray-blue energy rippled out, deleting the floor under Editor's feet. It didn't damage him—it removed the very context for his stance. He staggered, surprised—but not for long.
[ Override: RESTORE_TERRAIN("Stability Index: Editor_Lock") ]
The space reformed instantly.
"Nice trick," Editor said. "But you're still thinking like a character."
He flicked his wrist, and the spear shot forward—not toward Root's body, but toward his rewrite thread.
Root felt it. A yank in his spine, a glitch in his mind.
[ Hollow Rewrite Interrupted. Line Reversal Engaged. ]
He gritted his teeth.
He was being unwritten.
But only halfway.
Only his most recent edit—the Liberation Chain for Lyra—was under attack.
"You're not here to kill me," Root realized aloud. "You're here to undo what I changed."
Editor's face didn't shift. "Because change spreads. And if you're allowed to keep rewriting the people around you… the story fractures."
"Then maybe it deserves to break."
"Maybe it does," Editor said softly. "But not from you."
Root raised his Quill again, this time slower. Focused.
[ Reassert Thread: AUTHOR_ID_ROOT ]
[ Lock Token Accepted. Narrative Authority Balanced. ]
The Quill glowed brighter.
The two authors stood in a collapsing library of choices, breathing ink, blinking between worlds.
Not fighters.
Not mages.
But the kind of monsters only systems dreamed of forgetting.
And this war?
Would be written in edits.
Root didn't dodge the next strike.
He unwrote it.
As Editor's spear launched forward, Root dragged the Hollow Quill in a spiral through the air and muttered a single phrase:
[ Narrative Redaction: "Strike Never Registered" ]
The moment cracked. The spear froze mid-flight—then shimmered out of existence like it had been a suggestion, not a command. The code shivered in response. Editor raised a brow.
"You're bold," he said. "Dangerously so."
Root didn't smile. "You brought me here."
"I brought you here to remind you what happens when authors become selfish."
And then the world tilted.
Not literally.
The library tilted—pages flipping, memories tumbling, the very space rearranging itself into a spiral descending inward. Editor wasn't just fighting Root's present. He was dragging the battlefield into Root's past.
Root blinked—and suddenly he was standing in the Academy dorms.
Not the real ones.
The System's record of them.
Clean. Empty. Frozen in a moment before Root ever rejected the Crown.
"This is your anchor," Editor said from the shadows, his voice echoing through the simulation. "Where you were still salvageable. Where the story could've been steered back on course."
A ghost-version of Lyra appeared by the bed, smiling, carefree. She walked past him. Didn't see him.
Root clenched his fist.
"I'm not going back."
"You already are," Editor replied.
[ Reinstatement Directive: Branch Merge: "Academy Arc – Root Prime" ]
Root's knees buckled. For a moment, he wasn't sure who he was. The code tried to reapply his class, his level, his System records.
But the Hollow Quill pulsed in defiance.
[ Reassert Identity: NULL. Rewrite Rejected. ]
Root gasped and dropped to one knee.
He was holding.
But just barely.
"This is the trick, isn't it?" he said. "You don't destroy us. You seduce us with the comfort of being readable."
Editor appeared in the doorway, face neutral. "Because being understood is easier than being free."
Root stood again.
"No."
He raised the Quill, and for the first time, it didn't write a skill or a spell—it wrote a line.
Across the wall of the dorm room, like a scar on a perfect memory:
I was never supposed to fit in your story.
The simulated Academy glitched. The floor cracked. The ghosts faded.
Root looked Editor in the eye.
"You think this is personal?"
"It's not," Editor said quietly. "That's why it works."
And then they clashed again—not with weapons, but with beliefs.
The dorm simulation cracked completely.
The world folded back into the false library, shelves of unwritten quests and sealed memories rising like monoliths around them. Editor's throne pulsed with systemic light—no longer metaphor, but a keystone of reality maintenance.
Root could feel it.
If he destroyed that throne… the ripple might reach every rewrite the System ever buried.
He lifted the Hollow Quill. It burned in his hand now, eager to inscribe one final line.
But Editor didn't raise his spear.
He stepped forward instead—his voice quieter than ever.
"You think I'm proud of this place?" he asked.
Root paused.
"You think I wanted to become this?"
He motioned to the blank manuscripts behind him. Thousands. Each bearing a name… and a date of erasure.
"I was the first Author," Editor said. "The real one. I broke my system. I challenged the Crown. I rewrote a world that killed my sister in its first cycle. I saved people. And then I watched every one of them fall to the consequences of my edits."
Root lowered the Quill an inch.
"You kept writing."
"I had to. To fix the holes I made. To keep the narrative stable. Because if I didn't… the System would erase them all."
He pointed to Root now, not with anger—but grief.
"And you, with your noble defiance… You're repeating my story. Right down to the girl you're trying to protect."
Root's jaw clenched.
"But you stopped being a writer," he said. "You became a janitor. A prison warden for broken stories."
"I became what the world needed to survive."
"No," Root whispered. "You became afraid."
He raised the Quill again—this time, with resolution.
[ Rewrite Command: REMOVE_ANCHOR("Editor_Throne") ]
The room trembled.
Shelves screamed. Scripts unraveled.
Editor didn't stop him.
He stood still as the throne behind him crumbled to ink.
And then—finally—he smiled.
"…Good."
Root blinked.
Editor stepped down from the platform.
"Maybe this time, it'll end differently."
The world around them collapsed—not in fire, not in chaos.
But in silence.
As if a burden had finally been lifted.
And Root… was alone again.