Ink Against Perfection

Just as we feel like we can breathe again, we hear screams from outside. The change is instantaneous - while the library itself was being taken over by the Gods, it was also shielding us from the outside. So, as we step into the glowing of my barrier, the ground splits beneath our feet with a sound like paper tearing. Not stone. Not earth. Just thin, fibrous resistance, then the sharp rip of something that was never meant to be walked on. I stagger, clutching the pen so tightly my knuckles ache.

Around us, the world is gone. No village, no library, no sky I recognize. Instead - pages. Endless, weightless pages drifting in an ocean of white, some blank, some stained with blotches of half formed words. They turn slowly in the air, caught in a wind that doesn’t exist. Each time one flutters too close, I glimpse fragments: a door that was once real, a tree half drawn, a scream frozen in ink.

We stand on nothing more than a platform of written lines, looping and twisting beneath our boots. It shudders with every breath I take, as though reality itself is trying to remember how to hold together.

I whisper before I can stop myself:

“…This isn’t a battlefield. It’s a draft.”

Dalylah steadies her sword, its phoenix fire guttering uncertainly, like it too doesn’t know what’s real here. Yuki draws an arrow, calm, precise, though I catch the tightness in her jaw. They feel it as well: the fragility, the wrongness. We’re fighting not in the world but in its margins.

Then he comes.

At first he looks like Roderick, polished and immaculate as always. His boots don’t leave footprints on the words beneath him; they simply yield, smoothing under his weight. The golden trim of his coat gleams brighter than the drifting pages, his smile sharp and certain.

But the mask can’t hold against this place.

His shadow flickers, splitting into too many limbs, too many eyes. For every step forward, I glimpse another form beneath the surface; fangs where there should be teeth, wings beating inside the fabric of his coat. He doesn’t even try to hide it anymore. Not from us. Not from anyone.

“Look at this mess.” he says, and his voice doesn’t echo like sound. It bleeds, black and heavy, dripping through the air like spilled ink, filling our ears like water. “Loose ends. Torn stitches. Failed drafts still pretending to be a story alongside it’s author.” he tilts his head, glaring at Dalylah, and his smile is so gentle it makes me sick. “I offered you perfection. I offered you freedom from the constraints she put you in, in the first place. And you chose to fester in imperfection instead. Honestly, Dalylah, I’m extremely disappointed in you.”

Dalylah stiffens, but doesn’t speak. Yuki doesn’t lower her bow. And me? I feel my hand shaking around the pen, but I don’t let go.

Roderick spreads his arms, and the battlefield shifts again. Pages curl inward like they’re afraid of him, folding themselves into shapes. A cottage crushed flat into a ball of text. A tree twisted into a spear of unfinished ink. A child’s laugh ripped from the air, pressed into silence.

“This is what imperfection births.” he declares, and the words don’t just resound, they stain. The floating sheets nearest us darken, black letters blooming across them, blotting out everything else. “Chaos. Ugliness. Waste. Why cling to such frailty when I could have given you clarity?”

I want to scream at him. That chaos is what makes it real. That scars make the story worth reading. That the cracks are where light slips through. But my throat closes before I can speak, like he’s already writing silence into me.

Instead, it’s the pen that saves me.

The metal burns against my skin, not in pain but in reminder. Every failure I’ve written. Every page I thought worthless. It’s all here, pressed into the barrel. My ink. My scars. My truth.

I grip it tighter, and though my hand trembles, the words come out anyway, scraping raw.

“You don’t get to erase us.”

Roderick’s eyes narrow, his eyes leaving Dalylah and going to me instead. For a heartbeat, the mask slips further, and I see what’s really beneath: a page with no words at all. Just blankness, hungry and endless.

And suddenly, I understand. He isn’t trying to perfect the world. He’s trying to strip it bare. To smother it until nothing flawed remains.

Which means nothing human remains either.

The battlefield groans again, ready to collapse. But this time, I plant my feet.

If this is a draft, then so am I. And drafts don’t end until the writer stops.

Luckily, I am the Writer of this world. And I am not stopping.

Roderick’s gaze is still locked on me. Not Dalylah, not Yuki. Me.

His smile softens, almost pitying, but the ink drip weight of his voice makes the air sting.

“You.” he says, hand extending toward my pen. “Are a smudge. A stain on what could have been immaculate. Imperfections don’t belong on the page. They mar. They distract. They ruin. And you were a failure to begin with.”

He moves as though the pen is already his, as though I’ll hand it over simply because he names me unworthy. The words crawl into my ears, sticky, heavy. My grip tightens.

I force my voice out, raw and shaking:

“Maybe stains do ruin neatness. But they also tell you the story of what was spilled. Where you faltered. What you survived.” I lift the pen like a blade. “Scars are memories. And memories are ink that no one gets to erase.”

I try to write - my instinct, my weapon - but the lines I scrawl across the air fracture mid-stroke, splintering like glass. His presence presses down on every letter, demanding obedience to his false perfection. Each word wilts before it can take root.

Roderick chuckles, and the sound seeps through me like mold.

“Your ink doesn’t cut. It bleeds. Weakness disguised as defiance.”

Before he can take another step, the battlefield explodes with motion. Pages rip themselves into creatures: limbs folded from margins, claws sharpened from torn edges, faces erased into blank smears. They lunge for us with a sound like parchment shredding. Those are not Choken. No - those are the visions the Demon Lord has of Perfection.

Yuki moves.

Fast, precise, her bowstring hums with the golden thread Destiny gifted her. Each arrow sings as it leaves her grip, guided by something more than aim: conviction. They pierce through the constructs, unraveling them back into stray letters and dust. She doesn’t waste a word or a movement. Every shot falls where it needs to, clearing space around me and Dalylah.

“Stay focused!” she calls, not to herself but to me and Dalylah. Her tone is clipped but warm, like she’s stitching my fraying edges back together with steadiness alone.

Dalylah doesn’t answer, because Roderick finally turns his full attention back on her.

His hand lifts, palm open, and fire blossoms there. Not wild like hers, not golden like Strength’s blessing. Cold fire, blue and white, burning without smoke or soul. He holds it out to her like an offering.

“You could wield this.” he whispers, voice intimate even in this vast nothing. “A flame that never falters, never strays. No more hesitation. No more fear of burning those you mean to protect. A perfect blaze. A perfect you.”

Dalylah’s knuckles whiten on her hilt. Her breathing is shallow, ragged. I see her eyes catch the unnatural fire, wide and hungry, like she wants - needs - that control. I feel the battlefield lean with her hesitation. For a moment, I want to shout at her, to beg, to shake her shoulders.

But she looks at me.

Just one glance, sharp and pained. She sees me clutching the pen that won’t obey. She sees the words breaking apart in my hands. She sees the girl who isn’t perfect, who will never be perfect, but still refuses to stop writing anyway. She sees the Aya I am since I was born, the Aya she swore she would protect.

Her grip shifts. And the phoenix fire roars back to life along her blade, golden and furious, alive in a way his sterile imitation could never be.

“No.” she spits, and the word cracks like a whip through the empty pages around us. “I won’t burn your way. Never again.”

Roderick’s smile fractures. The pages tremble. His voice deepens, sharp as tearing vellum.

“Then you’ll burn my way regardless.”

Dalylah braces, and Yuki loses another arrow that cleaves a creature mid-lunge. I steady my pen against the shaking of my hands.

The clash isn’t just ink against fire, or pen against sword. It’s our refusal against his certainty. And I feel the weight of all three of us holding the line together.

He lunges.

His form warps as he moves, blades and mouths and hands made of perfect symmetry sprouting from his body. His strike lands like a page tearing in half after folding, clean, merciless. The shock wave throws us all back.

I slam into the ground hard enough to bite my tongue. Copper floods my mouth. Dalylah staggers, a line of blood already trickling down her arm where his claws grazed her. Yuki takes the brunt of another swipe, rolling to her feet with a hiss, blood darkening her sleeve.

And me… His perfect blade slices the air by my face, close enough that my cheek burns. The page beneath me turns blank, words erased where the edge passed. My own skin feels like it’s disappearing along with it.

“Imperfection.” Roderick sneers, towering over us. “Is weakness written in flesh. You are nothing but smudges in a manuscript I will erase.”

Dalylah coughs, spitting blood, but steadies herself. Her voice cuts through his sermon.

“If perfection means never making mistakes…” she growls. “Then it means never choosing at all.” she raises her sword again. Her hands shake, but she doesn’t lower it. “I’d rather burn for what I choose than shine for what you demand.”

The air shifts.

Her sword erupts, not with the sterile white fire he promised, but with a blaze that screams of life. Golden flames roar outward, licking the torn pages of the battlefield, curling them into ash. Behind her, a phoenix takes shape, wings spanning wide, eyes blazing.

Roderick snarls and slashes again, but this time her blade meets his. Flame crashes against shadow. The phoenix shrieks, and his perfect edge blackens at the touch, as if imperfection itself was poison.

He swipes at me, trying to erase me entirely, but Dalylah intercepts, her flames catching his hand. The smell of scorched paper fills the void.

“Not her.” Dalylah spits, forcing him back.

Yuki doesn’t waste the opening. She plants herself at Dalylah’s flank, golden thread glinting along her bow. She loses three arrows in rapid succession, each one embedding into the folds of his monstrous body. The thread hums, guiding every shot true.

Still, he’s not stopped. His arm lashes out like a whip, catching all three of us in its arc. I stumble sideways, pain searing my ribs. Yuki’s shoulder bleeds where the blow clipped her. Dalylah staggers, fire dimming for a moment under the impact.

But she refuses to fall. She forces her knees to lock, her flames flaring brighter. The phoenix screeches again, circling her sword, reforming from every ash that falls. She’s bleeding, burned, shaking, but she’s still standing.

“I am choosing!” she shouts, every word a hammer against the silence. Her blade comes down, fire and ash cleaving through the air. “And I’ll keep choosing until the end!”

The world answers her defiance.

The blank battlefield warps again, but not from Roderick’s will this time. Where her fire touches, emptiness doesn’t consume - it rewrites. Pages blackened by flame regrow words, fractured and uneven, but alive. Space opens, breathing room carved out of imperfection itself.

And in that space, I can finally breathe.

Dalylah’s defiance has bought me a heartbeat, a chance. My pen steadies in my hand, ink refusing to splinter this time. Words gather at the tip like blood ready to spill.

Roderick’s fury boils over, shadows coiling to strike again. But Dalylah’s fire stands tall, her phoenix wheeling in the air, wings stretched wide as if shielding all of us.

She’s no longer burning alone.

The heat in my hand is unbearable. The pen isn’t just burning, it’s eating through me, biting down into skin and bone, like it wants to devour the last piece of me that still belongs here.

I know what it means.

There’s nothing left to give.

Except the one thing I swore to keep.

The memory.

The one I bargained for with Beauty.

The one thread I thought untouchable.

My hand shakes, and still I lift the pen. Ink drips like blood down the page that isn’t a page but the battlefield itself - blank, waiting, demanding.

“I don’t want to…” I whisper. Maybe to myself. Maybe to them. Maybe to no one. “But I have to.”

And I write.

I press the quill to the empty void where a world should be and let that memory spill like ink.

The blank pages around us ripple, the sterile whiteness buckling as if rejecting the stain. But I don’t stop. I can’t. The quill scratches, and the memory etches itself into the paper of existence.

The frosting on a cake that leaned too far to one side.

My mother’s laugh, the sound of rain caught in sunlight.

My father’s clumsy singing, off-key but so sure of itself.

The warm press of my best friend’s shoulder against mine, whispering jokes too silly to repeat.

The way my first love looked at me, awkward, uncertain, but real.

Every detail floods the page. And with it, the battlefield quakes.

Blank space splits, then stitches itself into something jagged but alive. A table half-formed, candles flickering unevenly. A laugh that echoes too sharp, fading before it finishes. Scents that don’t match: vanilla cake and the smoke of burning pages.

It isn’t perfect. It isn’t whole.

But it’s mine.

I’m crying, I think, though the tears vanish into the ink spreading beneath me. My knees almost give out, but I press the words harder, carving them into existence with every stroke.

The page ignites with golden fire. The words don’t vanish this time. They take root.

And the world around us shudders.

The white void Roderick carved trembles like glass under strain. The floating scraps of parchment that had replaced our sky begin to bleed with color again - blue seeping in like watercolor, clouds smudging into existence. Beneath our feet, torn sheets stitch themselves back into stone and soil, roads threading into the outlines of Lysteria’s streets. Lanterns flare to life, smoke rising from chimneys, the sound of bells echoing from towers reformed from ash.

I hear water rushing of rivers carving through blank space as if someone had just remembered they should exist. Trees sprout from rips in the paper ground, their roots tearing through the false white until earth takes hold again. Each piece is imperfect: buildings reappear chipped, roads cracked, murals smeared. But it’s alive.

“This…” my voice cracks. “This is what you can’t erase.”

Roderick’s laughter rolls over us like thunder on clean parchment. Cold, flawless. Cruel.

“You call that a world?” his monstrous form looms, eyes like black punctuation tearing through the sentence of my life. “A crooked table, falling buildings, places you can’t even put a name on? That is not survival. That is rot.”

I almost break. Almost believe him. Because he’s right: none of it is sharp, none of it is clean. It’s blurred edges and missing words.

But Dalylah’s flames roar beside me, and Yuki’s bowstring hums, steady as a heartbeat. And when I look at the mess I’ve spilled onto this battlefield, I see it for what it is.

Not rot.

Not failure.

Proof.

“Maybe it is crooked.” I choke out, clutching the pen tighter. My palm blisters, skin cracking. “But so am I. And I’m still here.”

The world made from my memories trembles, the half lit candles flickering like they might go out. Then one stays. Just one, steady against the wind. And somehow, that’s enough.

I look up at him, tears streaking my face, my voice raw but unbroken.

“You wanted perfection?” my grip tightens until my knuckles split. “I’ll give you the opposite.”

The pen strikes the page again. Ink bursts outward, not clean lines but splatters, scars, uneven strokes. The battlefield shakes as jagged sentences rip through the white void, carving crooked pillars of reality.

Roderick reels back, his perfect edges buckling under the weight of imperfection given form.

I’m shaking, my body failing me, but I keep writing. Keep choosing.

Because if this is all I have, then I’ll burn every word I am to keep it alive.

The battlefield groans beneath us, the stitched together fragments of Lysteria trembling like they could tear apart again at any moment. Roderick looms in the half made sky, monstrous and immaculate all at once, his sword gleaming with the kind of false brilliance only perfection can carry.

I wipe the ink from my face with the back of my hand, smearing it like warpaint. My grip on the pen steadies. For the first time tonight, I don’t shake.

He sneers, voice echoing like black punctuation across a blank page.

“You think this mess can defeat me? You’ve only proven my point. You are failure embodied.”

I raise the pen, letting the blistered skin of my palm burn against the metal. My voice cracks, but it doesn’t falter.

“I failed so much…” my words cut through the silence, louder than his perfection. “My pen turned sharper than your blade.”

For an instant, there is only the echo. Then I strike.

Ink bursts from the nib like a flood, splattering across the white battlefield. The words I carve into the air are jagged, uneven, raw. Scars turned into sentences. They twist upward, forming lines that cut sharper than steel.

Roderick roars, bringing his perfect sword down to silence me. But the ink-written strokes slice through it. The flawless edge snaps like brittle paper, breaking into shreds that scatter into the void.

The monster staggers, his two heads splitting into torn paragraphs, his many eyes unraveling into smudged letters. Each limb collapses into paper scraps, fluttering in a storm around us. His scream is not sound, but the shriek of a story being torn apart.

I press the pen harder, dragging one last line across the broken battlefield:

Imperfection lives.

Roderick screams as he sees my golden ink bleeding in the air, forming a last and definitive blow.

“I am perfection! You cannot kill me in a way that matters, because perfection always returns! The world will always secretly crave it!”

None of that matters to my ink, though. It bursts towards Roderick, caging him in pure gold, constricting him to the point of no return. And with that, Roderick’s form shatters completely, reduced to nothing but ripped pages scattered on the wind - remnants of a perfection that could not endure ink.

The draft around us finally shatters with him, leaving behind this old new world that I’ve written into existence. Behind me, Dalylah and Yuki breathe hard, battered and bruised, but alive.

We are all alive.