The night hung heavy over the Loomspire, thick with the scent of ink and burning iron.
Outside, the world whispered and shifted — reality breathing unevenly as cracks shimmered in the air like veins of fractured glass. Through them, ghostly fragments of other worlds flickered and died: a forest made of memory, a sea that reflected only nightmares, a city suspended upside-down over nothing.
The story was breaking.
And at the heart of it, Mary sat before the dying fire, her hands trembling above the Codex.
The veins of shadow still crawled along her arm, pulsing faintly beneath her pale skin. They no longer hurt — that frightened her more. Pain meant something still fought back. Numbness meant surrender.
Lucien knelt across from her, a silver bowl between them. He'd drawn sigils around the edges with ash and crushed bone, each one a symbol of unbinding. His face was calm, but his eyes — those deep, sunlit eyes that never belonged to a creature of night — flickered with fear.
He said softly, "You shouldn't be alive."
Mary smirked without humor. "I've heard that before."
"I'm not speaking metaphorically." He brushed his hand across one of the sigils, and the ash glowed briefly. "Your blood isn't yours anymore. It's rewriting itself."
Mary looked down at her arm. The dark veins had spread to her collarbone, tracing elegant, unnatural lines — almost like calligraphy. "I know."
Lucien hesitated. "If we do this, it will hurt. More than anything you've felt."
Her voice was quiet. "If we don't, I'll become her."
He didn't argue. He didn't need to.
Lucien drew his dagger — an ancient blade forged from star-iron, its edge etched with runes that shimmered faintly in the firelight. He pressed it into his palm without hesitation. His blood spilled into the bowl, dark and glimmering like molten shadow.
"Your turn," he said.
Mary met his gaze, then dragged the edge across her wrist. Her blood poured out, lighter than his, silver and luminous like moonlight — the mark of the Queen's lineage.
The moment their blood mingled, the air shifted.
The sigils pulsed once, and a sound — like a page turning — echoed through the room.
Lucien began to chant.
It wasn't in any mortal tongue. The language felt wrong in the air, too old and too alive. The fire dimmed, the shadows lengthened. Every word he spoke pulled at the walls, the stones, the very shape of the Loomspire.
Mary's pulse quickened. The Codex began to hum.
"Lucien," she whispered, "it's responding."
He didn't stop. "It must."
The book on the table trembled, its pages fluttering violently. The runes along its spine burned white-hot. The shadow in Mary's veins flared to life, spreading faster, weaving intricate sigils beneath her skin. She gasped, clutching her chest as if her heart were being rewritten.
The Codex opened on its own.
Ink spilled upward like smoke, twisting into words in the air above them.
Lucien's chant faltered as the words began to write themselves:
"You cannot unwrite the blood that has already become story."
Mary's voice shook. "It's fighting us."
Lucien reached across the bowl, grabbing her wrist. "Then we write harder."
The veins beneath her skin glowed white — burning through shadow. Her eyes blazed with unnatural light, the silver bleeding away into something brighter, purer.
Lucien tightened his grip. "Repeat after me."
She nodded, teeth clenched.
"By the name unwritten," he said, "I unbind my story from the source."
"By the name unwritten," Mary gasped, "I unbind my story from the source."
The Codex shrieked. Its pages writhed like living things, tearing and rejoining themselves. The words in the air dissolved, replaced by a single sentence written in blood-red light:
"You are not the author."
Mary screamed as her body convulsed. The veins along her skin burst, spilling black ink instead of blood. It splattered across the floor, crawling toward the Codex, trying to return to it.
Lucien drew a circle with his blade, cutting the trail. "Stay with me!" he shouted. "You have to finish it!"
Mary tried to speak, but her voice fractured into two — one hers, one the Queen's.
"We are the same."
The Queen's voice was silk and venom.
"You are my echo, Mary. You write because I dreamed you into being. Every line you think you command, I shaped long before you took your first breath."
Mary's lips moved without her consent, her own voice answering the Queen's in a broken whisper.
"Then I'll be the story that kills its author."
She plunged her other hand into the bowl of mingled blood.
The reaction was instant.
The liquid erupted into flame — not heat but memory, burning through her mind. Every face she had ever known flashed before her eyes: Loosie's smirk, Els's calm gaze, the Friend's quiet understanding. And then, beneath them all — the Queen, smiling, proud, reaching out as if to caress her cheek.
"You cannot destroy what you are," the Queen whispered. "You can only divide yourself endlessly, until nothing remains."
Mary's scream shattered the circle of sigils.
Lucien grabbed her shoulders, shouting her name, but his voice came from far away — too distant to reach her.
She fell inward.
The world became ink.
Black rivers of language twisted around her, each word a blade, each sentence a wound. She saw herself written and rewritten — child, killer, lover, queen, monster, savior. Versions of her lined the current like paper dolls, all reaching for her, all dissolving when she touched them.
"You think this is freedom?"
The Queen's voice was everywhere, wrapping around her like silk. "This is what it means to be story — endless revision, endless pain."
Mary floated in the ink, weightless. Her body was gone, her veins threads of liquid text.
"I'm not yours," she whispered.
"No?" The Queen's voice smiled. "Then why do you still bleed my words?"
Mary looked down at her hands — they were covered in script, glowing faintly: the Queen's handwriting.
Rage flared.
"No more."
She bit into her palm, tasting ink and fire. With the last shred of her will, she began to write across her own skin — not the Queen's words, but her own.
They came haltingly at first, trembling with defiance:
"I am not your echo. I am the silence that follows."
The ink around her howled.
Reality splintered. She fell through language, through time, through every version of herself — until her body hit the stone floor of the Loomspire again.
Lucien caught her before she struck. His face was pale, his eyes wide.
"Mary—?"
She coughed, spitting black blood. The Codex on the table was no longer humming — it lay still, its surface cracked, faint smoke rising from its spine.
Lucien exhaled shakily. "You did it."
But she shook her head weakly. "No. She's still in here." Her hand trembled over her chest. "But she's sleeping now."
Lucien helped her sit. "Then we buy ourselves time."
Mary looked around the ruined chamber. The sigils had burned away, the walls were bleeding ink, and the light outside had changed — the dawn was too red.
"She'll wake soon," Mary said softly. "And when she does… the story won't wait for me to finish it."
Lucien met her eyes. "Then we end it first."
That night, they buried the Codex beneath the Loomspire's heart — deep in the roots where the first stories had been written in blood and prayer. Mary carved the seal herself, binding it with her name, though she knew it wouldn't hold forever.
Before they left, Lucien touched her shoulder.
"When this is over," he said, "what will you become?"
She looked at the horizon, where threads of crimson light stretched like veins across the dawn.
"Something unwritten," she whispered.
And far beneath them, where the Codex slept, a faint sound echoed — a heartbeat, slow and patient.
The Queen dreaming.