Ashes of Trust

The village keeps breathing for a while. Or at least pretends to.

Lanterns sway from patched posts, painting warm pools of light across dirt roads. The air smells faintly of stew, smoke, and the stubborn insistence of people trying to remember what “normal” feels like. Children run barefoot between the houses, shrieking with the kind of joy that’s too loud, too desperate, like they’re trying to out-pace the memory of their own screams from nights before.

I sit a little apart from all the fuss, diary open on my lap. The pages are scarred from everything I’ve forced through them, words stitched and torn and stitched again, a body that keeps getting sewn up only to be stabbed once more. My fingers hover over the feather, but I don’t write. Not yet. Every time I touch it, it feels hotter, like it resents me for asking more when it has already burned nearly everything inside me.

Across the square, Yuki is posted near the well, bow slung, posture sharp. She’s so steady she might as well have been carved there. Watching her is like watching the village itself hold its breath: tense, braced, waiting for the other shoe to drop. She doesn’t talk much when she’s like this. Doesn’t need to. Her silence is louder than any alarm bell.

Dalylah stands farther back, not guarding, not exactly watching, but thinking. I can tell because her hands twitch against her sword hilt like she’s fighting an enemy only she can see. She’s been quieter since the last fight. Quieter, but heavier. She hasn’t said it out loud, but I know she’s still chewing on his offer. Perfect Hero. No doubt. No fire that burns wrong.

If she takes it, what happens to all of us?

I close the diary and let the covers smack shut. The sound is small, but it echoes too much in my skull. The calm is worse than the fights, sometimes. At least when monsters are tearing through walls, you know where to swing. But this? This peace feels fake. Like paper stretched too thin, just waiting for the first tear.

A laugh cuts across the square. A real one, bubbling out of one of the kids who tripped over her own feet. Her mother scoops her up, kisses her forehead. Lantern light, along with the golden barrier up above, turns their skin gold. For one second, I want to believe it. That this place, these people, might actually be safe. That maybe tomorrow we won’t wake up to more screams.

But the thought barely has time to root before I feel it: the shift. Not in the ground, not in the air. In the way Yuki’s spine stiffens, in the way Dalylah’s eyes snap toward the road.

Something is coming.

And the silence that follows… It’s not peace anymore. It’s the world holding its breath so tightly it might choke.

The sound comes first. Boots against dirt, voices rising in recognition.

When I turn, I already know who it is.

Roderick walks into the square like it belongs to him. His smile is sharp enough to catch lantern-light, and the villagers drink it in like it’s salvation. A few call his name, relieved, like a hero just returned from some noble errand. It makes me want to laugh and gag at the same time.

Because I see the truth under that polished face. The predator behind the practiced grin.

But he doesn’t look at me. Not at Yuki by the well. Not even at the people who adore him.

His eyes go straight to Dalylah.

“So…,” he says, easy, like they’re just old friends meeting under a summer moon. “Have you thought about my offer?”

My stomach knots. The words suck the air out of the square, even if no one else realizes what’s hanging in them.

Dalylah doesn’t move at first. Her armor catches the lantern light, but her face… Her face is stone.

I want to scream at her. Don’t you dare. Don’t you even think about it.

But I can’t. My throat is too tight, my heartbeat too loud.

Yuki shifts by the well, bowstring whispering against her fingers. She feels it too, that razor-thin line we’re all standing on.

Dalylah finally speaks. Her voice doesn’t shake.

“No.” Dalylah says, each word deliberate. “I don’t want to be perfect. Not like that. Not at your price.”

The silence is suffocating. Even the children stop moving. Lanterns flicker as if the night itself is holding its breath.

I can’t breathe either. Relief punches through me so hard it almost feels like pain. She didn’t take it. She didn’t take the easy way out.

But with that relief comes dread. Because I know him. I know what comes next.

Roderick’s smile doesn’t falter, but something in his eyes curdles. The warmth drains, leaving something colder, truer, behind. He tilts his head, as if Dalylah is an insect that just dared to crawl across his plate at a banquet.

“Oh, Dalylah,” he murmurs, his voice velvet, but the kind that chokes. “Such a shame. You could have been flawless.”

I grip the diary against my chest, the feather burning at my side like it already knows it’s about to bleed me dry. My mouth is dry, but the words still echo in my head, screaming louder than any villager ever could.

She said no. And now we’re all going to pay for it.

Roderick’s smile doesn’t crack. It shatters.

The kind of shatter that cuts when you look at it.

He spreads his arms, voice rising louder than the murmurs of the villagers. Every syllable carries like a verdict.

“So be it. I offered you perfection, and you chose failure. Do you think that makes you noble? No. It makes you weak. Ungrateful. Pathetic.”

Gasps ripple across the square. Some villagers step back, others instinctively lean forward, like moths hypnotized by the fire even as it burns them.

His tone sharpens, wrapping around the night like barbed wire.

“Then hear me, all of you. I will make this world perfect - whether you beg for it or you choke on it. For perfection does not ask permission. For order does not require consent.”

And then the air tears.

The illusion he wears, the flawless hero, the golden chosen, the Lord, collapses. What stands in his place is not a man.

It is hunger given form.

Two heads bloom from his shoulders, jaws splitting too wide, filled with teeth that shouldn’t fit inside. His chest convulses, skin tearing into mouths that scream without sound. Eyes open across his body, one after another, each with slit-pupil precision that pins us in place. His skin ripples, like paper folding and unfolding, each breath a page torn from the world itself.

Someone screams. Not a word. Just terror given voice.

And then the village itself begins to answer.

The ground lurches. Houses fold inward as if they were no more than pop-up illustrations in a child’s book, collapsing into flat pages before ripping down the middle. The sky blackens, not like storm clouds, but like paper set alight: curling, burning away into void.

My breath lodges in my throat as I see my barrier almost breaking around us.

This is it. This is the truth I always knew, but now everyone else can see it too.

At the edges of the square, people distort. Fingers too long. Faces melting into blank parchment. Voices hollow, repeating words that aren’t theirs. Choken. His creations. Not myths. Not rumors. Proof.

Yuki is already moving, bow in hand, steady as the world unravels around her.

“Stay close!” She barks, voice cutting through the panic like an anchor.

I clutch the diary so tightly it cuts into my palms. The feather sears at my side, begging to be used, but I feel the truth in my bones harder and harder now. Every word I write now will cost me more than ink.

Dalylah hasn’t moved. She stares at him - no, it - with a kind of hollow fury.

“You…!” She starts, but her voice is drowned out by the chorus of screams as the square breaks into chaos.

I want to tell her to run. I want to tell all of them to run.

But there’s nowhere left to go. The world itself is tearing, and the tear is him.

The truth hangs naked before us:

Roderick. Lord. Chosen. Hero. Savior.

No.

Demon Lord.

The author of every nightmare, every Choken, every page torn out of this world.

And now… Everyone knows.

The Pen burns.

Not like fire. Fire is warm, alive, familiar. This is… Sterile. Surgical. Like someone’s taking a scalpel to the palm of my hand, cutting away until only ash will remain. I grit my teeth and try to write anyway, but the words evaporate before the ink even touches the page.

Lines curl into smoke, then vanish.

Sentences die mid-birth.

Every time I try to tether the world back together, it unravels faster.

And still I keep trying, focusing my magic at its tip until it fails. Because what else is there?

A scream cuts through the crackling of pages tearing, human, then not. Yuki moves like the scream belongs to her. Her bow sings, arrows slicing through the distortions as they materialize: creatures with limbs shaped like ripped paper, jaws splitting along the grain. They fall, but not cleanly, dissolving into scraps that flutter upward, only to be swallowed again by the black fire chewing through the sky.

She doesn’t waver. Not once.

Not for glory. Not for anyone watching.

Just to buy us a few more seconds.

Dalylah stands at the edge of the square, armor catching the red glow of the burning sky. Her sword is out, but she doesn’t swing. Not yet. Her eyes keep darting, from the villagers scrambling for shelter, to Yuki carving order out of chaos, to me, trembling, useless, inkless.

She sees me. And she doesn’t look away.

I don’t have time to wonder what that means. Because Roderick turns.

His many eyes swivel, all at once, pinning me like a bug under glass. The air curdles.

“There you are!” he hisses. Not one voice, but dozens, overlapping. “The parasite with the pen.”

I clutch the diary to my chest, even though it feels like holding a collapsing star. My skin blisters against the quill. My vision flickers in and out, like someone’s shaking the film reel of my life.

He doesn’t walk. He doesn’t need to. Space folds around him, pages twisting, and suddenly he’s too close.

“Every imperfect word you write,” he snarls, “Is graffiti on my perfect design.”

I try again. Just one word. One sentence. Anything.

It dies in smoke.

The pen screams in my hand. My skin splits. I smell blood and ash and something older.

Roderick raises a clawed hand - no, not a hand, a blot of ink sharpened into talons.

“I will fix it. I will fix you.”

The world stutters. My body buckles. For one terrifying instant, I feel it: the unmaking. My unmaking. The edges of myself peel back, names falling off me like dried leaves. My birthday. My favorite book. The scar on my knee from falling off my bike. They slip, sliding into his waiting mouths.

I bite down hard on my tongue. Taste iron. Anchor myself to the pain.

Not yet. Not yet.

“Aya!” Yuki’s voice cuts through. Sharp, furious. She’s still fighting, her bowstring snapping with each release. “Don’t you dare let go!”

Her words slam into me harder than Roderick’s claws.

Don’t you dare.

Like she believes I can actually resist.

Dalylah moves then. Fucking finally. She steps in front of me, sword raised, shoulders squared, eyes blazing. Her stance isn’t perfect. Her hand shakes. But she’s between me and him, and that means something.

The Demon Lord laughs, the sound dripping acid onto the unraveling square.

“Ah, little failure. Defending another failure. How poetic.”

But the talons don’t stop. They reach for me, for the book, for the last scraps of who I am.

And all I can think is: this is how it ends. Not with fire. Not with blood. But with erasure.

Somehow, we run.

Or rather, Dalylah drags me, one arm hooked around my waist while I stumble like I’ve forgotten how legs work. The world keeps ripping at the seams behind us: houses folding in like half-burned paper, screams echoing, Roderick’s laughter curling like smoke through the air. Yuki’s bow sings somewhere back in the chaos, every string-snap a reminder that she’s buying us this chance.

Dalylah shoves me against the shadow of a crumbling wall. Her breath is sharp, furious.

“Why aren’t you doing anything?” she hisses. “You’re just standing there while everything falls apart!”

I clutch the diary and the pen to my chest. My hand shakes around the feather, blistered and raw.

“I tried,” I rasp, voice breaking. “It won’t work. The words…” I hold up the page, blank except for a smear of blood and ash. “They don’t stick. They die the second I write them.”

Her eyes flash with… Something.

“So that’s it? You give up?”

I almost snap back, but the words stick in my throat. Not because she’s wrong. Because she’s too close to being right.

I force a breath. Then another. The memory of Knowledge’s voice scrapes through my head, clinical and smug: What is lost can still be anchored… Tethered to a witness.

My stomach lurches.

Anchor.

Without one, maybe the pen refuses to burn what’s left of me. Maybe it’s protecting me from erasing myself out of existence.

I look at Dalylah. Her jaw tight, her fists clenched, her body positioned between me and the collapse outside like she can hold it back with will alone. She’s always demanded the truth from me. Always accused me of hiding something. And she was right.

I swallow hard, my throat raw.

“You always said I was hiding something from you.” her glare sharpens, but she doesn’t deny it. “You’re right.” I whisper. My hand trembles as I press the diary against my chest, against my heart. “But I won’t anymore. Not from you. Not from me.”

Dalylah blinks, the shift in my tone throwing her off-balance.

“Aya? What are you..?”

And then I let go.

The quill burns bright in my hand, white-gold instead of searing black. The diary flips open on its own, pages tearing from their spine, scattering into the air like startled birds. Each page glows, not with ink, but with memory.

I see them before they leave me:

My mother, flour on her cheeks, laughing in the kitchen.

My father, tired eyes crinkling as he leaned over my homework.

My first crush calling me that stupid nickname, half affection, half mockery.

The night I stayed awake crying over a story I’d written, giving up on everything around me, giving up on life.

The moment I opened my eyes in this world, terrified, certain I was already gone.

All of it, every failure, every scar, every breath of Earth and Lysteria both, pours out of me. My lungs seize like I’m drowning, like giving it up means losing the right to breathe.

The golden pages stream into Dalylah. They pierce through her chest, vanishing inside like arrows of light. She gasps, staggers, braces herself against the wall. Her eyes blaze with fire and confusion and something deeper. Something raw.

I choke on the silence left behind, empty in a way I’ve never been before. Hollowed. Bare.

But still here. Because she’s holding it.

Dalylah’s breath comes ragged, her body shaking. When her gaze meets mine, I know she’s seen everything. Every word. Every lie. Every truth I never dared to say.

Her voice is hoarse when she finally speaks.

“You… You’re not even from this world.”

I nod. My vision swims, but I don’t look away.

“I’m not. I was the one writing it. The one who made you. And then… I ended up here. Stuck in my own story.”

She stares, her mouth parting, but no accusation comes. No sword. Just silence thick enough to drown in.

I press my bleeding palm over hers, where she still clutches the hilt of her blade. My voice cracks.

“Now you know everything. No more hiding. If I vanish, if he erases me… You’ll remember. You’ll keep me here. You’ll keep going.”

Her grip tightens around my hand. Almost painful. Anchor-painful.

“I… I see you. All of you.” she whispers, stunned. “It’s heavy. Gods, Aya, it’s so heavy. How can you live like this?”

Tears sting my eyes, though I don’t know if they’re relief or grief. I give her a wet chuckle.

“The heaviness means it’s real. I’m real, failures and all. As long as you carry it.”

Her jaw sets. Fire flickers behind her exhaustion.

“I’ll carry it.” she says. “Even if it breaks me.”

Outside, the sky splits open again with Roderick’s roar. But in the crack between destruction and survival, something shifts. I don’t feel like I’m slipping anymore.

I feel tethered.

I leave the alcove that is sheltering us, and run back into the fray. The ground won’t stop breaking.

It folds and tears in front of me, the world unraveling into sheets of paper that catch fire before they even touch the ground. The smell is ink and ash, sharp enough to burn my lungs. Every instinct in me screams to collapse, to curl into myself and hope it’s quick.

But I don’t.

Because Dalylah is at my back. Her hand still burns where it gripped mine. My memories sit inside her now, heavy, unshakable. And somehow that makes me steady too.

Yuki’s voice cuts through the chaos like an arrow loosed.

“On your left!”

I turn, pen in hand, words burning across the diary before I can second-guess them. The sentence hits the air and twists, solidifying into a barrier that splits a distortion-creature in half. Pages of nothing scatter into smoke.

Yuki doesn’t waste time admiring it. Her bowstring thrums again, each shot pinning another tear in the air before it can widen. Her movements are mechanical in their precision, no hesitation, no wasted effort.

Dalylah roars beside me. Not a war cry polished for glory, but a raw, human sound, jagged with anger. Her blade burns red in the light of the collapsing sky. She moves like wildfire, striking where Yuki leaves gaps, cutting down the warped forms that claw their way through the fractures.

And me?

I write.

But for the first time, I’m not writing to stop myself from vanishing. I’m writing because I know I won’t. My hand shakes, but the words don’t fade this time. They bite into the pages, stubborn, alive. A shield of golden ink hardens against Roderick’s surge of power. A counter-script bends his distortion back onto itself, leaving him howling as his perfect symmetry shatters into grotesque angles.

“You can’t keep this up!” he bellows, his monstrous form blotting out the night, a dozen eyes narrowing on me. “You should not exist!”

My knees nearly buckle. I feel the quill pulse like it wants to tear itself apart.

But then Dalylah slams her shoulder against mine, anchoring me physically as much as she does metaphysically.

“She exists because I say she does!”

Her fire lashes upward, not clean, not perfect, but strong enough to make the Demon Lord stagger.

Yuki’s arrow follows, glowing like a streak of lightning, piercing through one of his false heads.

“And I’ll make sure both of them keep existing.” The archer growls.

I laugh, broken, breathless, a little hysterical. And I write again. This time the words don’t just hold. They sing. Because I’m not writing alone.

The three of us move as one. Yuki’s precision. Dalylah’s fury. My words stitching the battlefield so it doesn’t collapse entirely.

We don’t win. Not really. The village burns at the edges, the sky remains cracked, Roderick still looms larger than life. But we don’t die, either. We carve out survival in the middle of inevitability. And survival, right now, feels like rebellion.

When the last wave of distortions pulls back with Roderick’s snarl, the silence that follows is deafening. The ruins around us glow faintly with embers. Villagers cry in the distance, but they’re still there. Still human. Still alive.

I stagger, pen clutched to my chest. Dalylah catches me before I can fall. Her grip is bruising, grounding.

Yuki surveys the wreckage, shoulders tense, but her voice comes out steady.

“He’ll be back. But we will be here.”

I look at them both, the bowstring and the flame. And I realize something that makes the ache in my bones almost bearable:

This isn’t just my fight anymore.

Dalylah knows all my truths. Yuki already bore all my weight without complaint. And together… We’re still standing.

The ruins of the village smoke around us, but inside my chest, something glows stubbornly. Not hope. Not quite.

But resistance.