The platform had stopped shaking, but the Editor's rage still echoed through the air like thunder trapped in ink.
"You disobeyed the outline," it hissed. "You rewrote yourselves without permission."
Its form loomed larger now—pages ripping free from its body, spinning through the air like blades. Eyes made of punctuation marks opened and blinked across its torso. Its voice came from every direction, layering over itself like a corrupted audiobook.
"I gave you order. I gave you roles. I made you readable."
Mikael stood tall, bruised but unbroken. The pen in his hand no longer felt like a weapon—it felt like a voice.
"You made us predictable. Hollow. Dolls that smiled when told."
Lina joined him, her fingers glowing with lines of poetry. "You thought safe meant good. That no conflict meant perfection."
Elise stepped forward, holding nothing. Just herself. "But no one reads stories like that. Because they don't feel real."
Arielle was last. Her red cloth from earlier had returned, not as a binding—but as a cloak. Her eyes met the Editor's.
"You were never a writer," she said softly. "You were a censor."
With a furious cry, the Editor launched itself forward. Pages whipped at them—slicing, stabbing, tearing at air and skin. But every time the pages struck, the ink recoiled. The real memories, the real truths, pushed back.
Mikael raised his pen, but it wasn't just ink that flowed this time.
It was memory.
Every forgotten moment. Every erased line. Every time someone said, "You're too much," or "You're not enough."
He wrote one word in the air.
"Truth."
The Editor froze.
Its arms of quills snapped. Its body began to fall apart—letters spilling like sand.
"You… were meant to end quietly," it wheezed. "No rage. No resistance."
"But we chose to scream," Lina whispered.
One final gust of ink rose—
And then, silence.
The Editor collapsed into a puddle of black, evaporating into the floor.
The platform dimmed. The pages dissolved. And for the first time since the story began, the sky above them turned blue.
Real sky.
Not paint.
Not fiction.
They were standing at the edge of something new.
"Is it over?" Elise asked.
"No," Arielle said. "It's free now."