Chapter 14 – The Unwritten Duel
They stood in the center of the Fountain of Between.
Kael.And Authryn.Two versions of the same heartbeat, drawn by opposite pens.
The water rippled beneath them—not water now, but a manuscript—liquid lines of text spilling outward in endless spirals.
Bran and Liora could only watch from the edge. Time had stalled, as if waiting to see which draft would remain.
Authryn struck first.
He didn't move.
He rewrote.
Kael's sword vanished mid-swing, transformed into a sentence fragment: "a boy with too much hope."
Kael staggered. "You're using author-rights!"
Authryn's eyes gleamed. "You left them behind when you doubted your voice."
Kael focused. Remembered.
The smell of old parchment. The comfort of margin notes. The thrill of an unbalanced plot.
He whispered an edit of his own:
"The boy reclaims the genre."
His body lit with glyphs. His shadow reattached. His hands gripped the sword again—only this time, it glowed with quotation marks and ellipses.
"Try erasing me now."
Their clash was silent.
Not sword against sword, but narrative against narrative.
Authryn twisted his fingers. "Delete regret."
Kael parried, "Insert courage."
Ink burned.
Ideas collided.
Each strike broke reality into punctuation:Periods fell like meteorites.Commas danced like sparks.And exclamation marks exploded across the sky.
Liora shouted from the edge, "He's trying to overwrite your origin!"
Bran pointed at the book still open on the pedestal beside the fountain.
"The last page is still blank!"
Kael's eyes locked on it.
That was it.
The story had no ending yet.
He sprinted through collapsing metaphors, dodging fragments of failed fables, and dove for the book.
Authryn lunged after him, reaching—
Too late.
Kael gripped the quill that appeared in his palm.
Wrote one final line.
"I am not a draft. I am the decision."
The book snapped shut with thunder.
Authryn shattered like a mirror slammed with truth.
Shards of his presence fell into the Fountain and dissolved into scattered subplots.
Silence.
The Realms steadied.
The stars stopped blinking like cursors.
Time clicked back into motion.
Bran approached, eyes wide. "What did you just do?"
Kael stood slowly, exhausted but whole.
"I didn't defeat him," he said.
"I finalized myself."
But as the echoes faded, a single page fluttered from the sky and landed before him.
It wasn't from his book.
It was older.
Rough. Singed at the corners.
Kael picked it up and read aloud:
"Chapter 0: When the Realms First Whispered."
Liora's voice dropped to a whisper. "That's not part of our story…"
Bran paled. "Then whose is it?"
Kael turned the page over.
On the back was a single word.
Editor.