Climax

The marble hall stretched longer than it ever had before, its black-veined floor a path that seemed to unfurl endlessly before her. Cecilia’s lungs burned as she sprinted, skirts torn, slipper heels scraping, heart slamming against my ribs like it could batter a way out of my chest.

Behind me, his laughter followed. Low, rich, and maddeningly amused—because he didn’t need to chase.

“You can run,” his voice thundered—not from his throat, but from the walls, from the air, from each corner of her eyes. “But there is nowhere and no one you can hide in for sanctuary.”

The chandeliers overhead rattled violently, crystals chiming like warning bells, before they exploded in a rain of glittering shrapnel. They pelted her hair and caught against her arms, leaving them bloodied and raw, but she did not stop moving.

Every door she touched was locked, if they bothered to have a knob in the first place. Every window she smashed revealed not night air but solid stone where glass had been moments before.

He was rewriting reality, line by line, erasing every plausible exit that had never truly existed.

“You see?” His voice curled around me, hisses dripping manic with cruelty. “I am not like you or any other air-brained plebian in this story. I am the story! And you—my darling, dumb, brow-beaten muse—are mine to keep until I grant the mercy of getting sick of you and moving on to the next doll.”

She spun, ragged breath heaving, and there he was—Not lord or narrator or any man made flesh. He was a contorting concept of magic and greed, his visage twitching and sparking with unstable colors and burning with possibilities barely contained to a singular form. The lord stood tall and hunchbacked and growing, an artificial, imperfect divinity just barely held on by a stitch. The whites of his white eyes burned with something more terrible than desire—Inescapable possession. Inarguable control.

Cecilia clenched her jaw, teeth bared as she shouted, “You don’t get to control our lives!”

The walls bent at his smirk, folding inward like paper creased by invisible fingers. He guffawed, his laugh a mix of disbelief and offense. “I already have,” he stated, “And I always will, you stupid woman.” He raised his hand, and with a flex of his fingers, the floor gave out beneath her. She yelped as her feet sunk into the gripping, slimy marble, as though it was collapsing sands, dragging her down into the story’s spine.

Blood roared in its rush through her skull. She kicked and clawed, digging her cracked nails into the muck and pulling, pulling, pulling with strained grunts until finally, finally, she dragged herself free. She stumbled forward, her knees and elbows slamming onto solid ground, but the pain could not register through her own amazement at this ability, to actually hold onto these morphs of reality.

She was not the only one taken aback. Olrin’s breath stuttered in his throat, the catch resounding through the air.

He was surprised. He hadn’t expected that. And that was what Cecilia needed.

Something snapped inside her. Maybe it was rage, maybe it was the raw instinct to survive—The name did not matter, but the spark it ignited did, sending her sprinting at Olrin. Flying low to the ground, dodging all other preojectiles and obstacles sent at her, her eyes flicked to the ground at the flashing ground. She reached, and her hand closed around her nearest weapon—a shard of fallen chandelier glass. Finally, in range of Olrin, I slashed, the gleaming point aimed at his neck.

In the split of a split of a second, though, his hand caught my wrist in a crushing, inhuman grip. Releasing a gasp of pain, she unwillingly dropped the glass shard, face contorted in pain as he glared down at her. Olrin opened his mouth, but before he could speak, they both heard it.

A drip.

They glanced down. On the floor were small droplets of red. Astonished, disbelieving, Olrin released Cecilia’s arm, staring instead at his hand as she stumbled away.

From his ring finger through his palm was a deep gash, blood bubbling to the surface before smearing down the life lines.

His eyes were wide, but not with pain. “You…” He went quiet, whatever existed of his brain coming to terms with what he saw. “You wounded me?” It was barely a question, more alike to a stunned observation.

Cecilia cradled her wrist against her chest, her mouth as a flare as she spat, “You’re not invincible—You never were, none of this is! And it’s all finished!”

What remained of his hair-thin composure finally cracked. The hall flickered, as though reality itself was doubting his grip. He snarled and the chandeliers reignited all at once, fire roaring in every glass prism.

The world warped violently around them, Olrin’s narration and Cecilia’s rebellion colliding in an ultimate plot hole breakdown, their simultaneous existences so incompatible it was tearing the very world apart. Fire and marble, shadow and glass, folding into a battlefield where every heartbeat rewrote the ground beneath her feet.

…

The fire burned without smoke, without heat—just light, searing and merciless, licking across the marble as though the hall itself had been inked in flame. Cecilia’s shadow danced on every surface, multiplied and distorted until she could not tell which was hers and which belonged to him.

He advanced slowly, his shape sprawling the lengths of all walls that remained. He did not need to run; he demanded the world bend to his will, and it had no choice but to comply, as would she. “A heroine, armed with broken glass—So poetic!” His voice dripped his venom, almost sickened. “But do you see? I only have to decide it’s not sharp anymore.”

I looked down in horror. The shard in my hand was dull, crumbling into dust between my fingers. My only weapon gone with a single spoken line.

He spread his arms, proclaiming the consequences of their battle, of her disobedience. “You live because I allow you to! You breathe because I have written lungs for you, and I have been kind enough not to take them away! You think you can oppose me, but even your thoughts echo in the margins I own.”

The firelight dimmed, narrowing into a single spotlight burning down upon her. The rest of the hall dissolved into black pages fluttering in an unseen wind. She shielded her face as they flew around her like a flock, her eyes peeking from the creak between her arms. The world was gone, blackened, a void. He had stripped the world bare, leaving her center stage in his theater.

For a moment, she faltered, feeling the walls inside her head begin to give under the weight of all that had and was happening. She hated the weakness that made her determination, her rebellion, her vengeance, all that brought her here, start to buckle. Was all of this worth it? Was there any chance at all that she could return to where she came, where she had wanted to leave in the first place? What good was there in trying to leave when there was no assurance she could leave, not when no one else had been able to?

She felt sick, peeled apart layer by layer, a sense of betrayal that shot outward and inward all around her.

But she remembered—His bleeding hand bleeding. A red stain he hadn’t chosen, hadn’t anticipated. The faces of her allies along the way. She could never know if they truly existed in every definition. But they were real; in the best and worst points of this endless time here, they were there, and she still carried them with her.

They were all—all of them—proof that something could slip through the seams of his narration.

Everything in this world, including Olrin or Dmitri or whoever he really was, could be broken through and escaped.

“You don’t own my thoughts,” I said, forcing my voice into the void. She looked out into the nothingness, through it, so all that waited in it could feel her own power fill its absence. “You set the stage, but you can’t control what is done upon it. You can’t keep the actors from leaving into the margins. That is where I exist!”

The platform beneath her feet rumbled, along with all else around her. The pages were a cyclone that swirled around and around and around. Her hairband broke under the pressure, sending her hair flying in wisps, joining the rest of the chaotic black.

The pages rippled. Cecilia dug her nails into her palms until they cut into her flesh, the pain both grounding and undeniably real as she kept her stance steady, planted, determined.

He spoke, quick and desperate now, each word like a lash. “You don’t have a choice, you pathetic, worthless wretch! Under my orders—You will stumble!”

She felt her knees weaken.

“You will suffocate!”

Air tore itself from her lungs, leaving her choking.

“And you will break!”

Her chest cracked with agony, and she felt her bones splinter, sinew oozing into each crevice and crack that could be engulfed in torture.

But even still, without falter, she refused to fall. She grit her teeth, eyes squinted forward. Her words came out in a whisper—not to him, but to herself:

“I endure.”

The moment the words left her lips, the air rushed back into her body. The pain dulled, her stature renewed, the weakness vanished. His decrees had not stuck. Her word had overwritten his.

His eyes went impossibly wide, furious, fear underlying his rage. “You dare narrate against me?! You cannot defy me—I own this world! I own everything! I own you!”

The hall quaked violently. Pages shredded in the wind, sentences unraveling into meaningless letters that rained like black snow. His figure flickered as the cloak of pages haphazardly shot around and away from him. Such a sight was terrible, beautiful, indescribable in its opulent sacrilege, but no longer flawless. There was a jagged edge to his outline now, a smudge in the ink of his being.

She raised her chin, her throat raw but undeterred. “That—This is all fake; you own nothing! I am not your story; I am the margins, and that is where the story bleeds!”

As she fell, floated, stagnated down through the thick air, she saw whatever could be called ground beneath her split, like a monstrous birth tearing through from below. From the crack rose not fire, not shadow—but blankness. Empty white, raw possibility, waiting for a hand to write it.

Olrin stood on one side, his maw hung open, bleeding stars and ink, while she staggered on the other, clutching only my resolve.

He raised his hand, and his voice thundered like a gavel:

“You are finished! This is all finished!”

The floor buckled beneath her. Cecilia’s heel slipped, momentum dragging her toward the abyss. She flung her arms wide, clawing at the collapsing papers and stone that clung to the sides and floated midair. As she held on, she screamed, into the void, “No, I am not!”

The air beneath her feet hardened into a solid surface, rubbery as a springboard. She vaulted high, soaring above the crack as the world obeyed her for a heartbeat. The torn scraps of skirts that clung to her still whipped in the unseen wind, and when she landed, the impact scattered the remaining marble flooring like broken glass.

His jaw clenched. “How bold, but always so clumsy.”

With a flick of his wrist, the shattered pieces rose into the air, twisting into a hurricane of razor shards howling toward her. She ducked, rolled, felt the bite of steel, glass, and whatever else he conjured bite into and through her shoulder. Blood welled hot, but she bit back any cry.

She held focus, held power, and persisted.

Her body bent, spun, and every shard that might have struck instead sliced empty air. The hurricane dissolved into harmless glitter, falling like snow around her.

“Defiance,” he hissed, “is not destiny!”

He slammed his palm against the ground. Ink bled from his touch, spreading in black rivers that solidified into chains. They lunged, alive, tangling around Cecilia’s wrists and throat. She choked, vision swimming as the shackles tightened and bit.

Olrin followed the chains’ lead, each step heavy, a punctuation, a sentence. His voice quieted as Cecilia pulled against her constraints, his tone intimate, almost reverent, as he stated, “Every heroine ends in surrender. End of story.”

She felt the world narrowing, the script locking around her. Her breath shallow, limbs leaden, the weight of his story pressed down—Until she forced her lips apart, her own simmering, glowering eyes holding his.

“Not me,” she damned. She gasped, tensing her muscles as she forced her words louder, “Not any of us!”

The chains shivered, and with one unforgiving pull of Cecilia’s hands, the links shattered with a sound like thunder, exploding into ink that spattered across her skin.

Olrin’s eyes widened in horror. His narration no longer sealed her—It fed her.

Cecilia raised her arms, and the blank crack at their feet surged upward, blossoming into a wall of white. From it, she pulled not marble, not fire, but words—scrawled across the air in letters of light. Her voice trembled but did not break—

“Now, this is over.”

The letters coiled around me like armor, each phrase a shield, each line a blade.

He snarled, baring teeth like a cornered beast before releasing a universe-shattering roar. He flung his hands wide. Shadows poured forth, shaping into monstrous sentences—barbed lines, jagged paragraphs, entire chapters of terror clawing at her. Cecilia charged through them, slashing the words apart with glowing script, each clash erupting into sparks of her own meaning.

The hall became a battlefield of grammar and blood, punctuation striking like arrows, metaphors shattering like glass. Every breath was a line, every heartbeat a revision. From the corners of her vision, in the glowing sparks of conflict and resolve, Cecilia caught glimmers of recognition, animalic forms of light and strength that burned as bright as constellations.

A doe with wide, soft eyes.

An ermine with a wrinkled, upturned nose.

Two birds with a wide, knowing smile and thin, wispy feathers.

A bear with jagged, faded scars.

They were here. They were real. And Cecilia pressed on alongside them.

Olrin bellowed, voice cracking with rage, “I END THIS STORY!”

And Cecilia, lungs burning, every nerve on fire, screamed back—

“I BEGIN MY OWN.”

Their words collided in the center. Ink and light fused, exploded, set alight in all-consuming blaze. What had long ago been a hall dissolved into pure unwritten white, reality itself stripped bare.

The silence after the blast was unbearable. No hall, no chandeliers, no marble beneath her feet—only a void, raw and blinding, where the story itself had been erased. The two hovered in it like two stains on a white sheet, the world waiting to be written anew.

Between them, afloat in tempting stillness, was a quill. It shimmered in the air between them, black feather, tip dripping ink like venom. Olrin reached out his hand, beckoning to it. His smile was a wound stitched with arrogance, too wide and so completely reliant.

“It always comes back to me,” he whispered, more to himself than her. “I am the center. I am the voice. You can snatch at margins, but only I hold the page.”

And he lunged. The quill seared toward his grip like a loyal blade returning to its lord.

I screamed—not a word, but a raw refusal, a sound so ragged it tore my throat. The letters of light still clung to me, flickering, weak. I threw them forward, a shield of verbs and fractured defiance, and with both hands I seized the quill first.

It burned like fire and ice together. Ink poured down my arms, biting into my skin, trying to brand me his. His voice roared through me:

“You cannot write without me!”

But I pushed back, teeth gritted, and forced the quill’s tip across the blank horizon. Not his words—mine.

“I don’t have to.”

Cecilia snatched at her throat, fingers giving a harsh tug to her collar. From it, she pulled Coriander’s pin—Tiny, silver, entirely inconsequential under normal circumstances.

Her Chevok’s gun.

With a small press of her thumb, the pin’s point was unsheathed, and Cecilia tore her arm downward. Its point, in its downfall, caught onto something, just the give Cecilia had imagined, and ripped the whiteness open. Reality split, revealing a jagged seam of darkness and blinding light. Through it, she saw white, white, white, glowing, burning, everything possible white.

It was the exit.

Olrin howled, lunging, trying to drag her back into his ink. His arms wrapped around her, hot and cold, desire and fury all at once. His breath scalded my ear—“You are nothing without me! You cannot exist without me!”

The pin stayed stationary in her grip, unmoving, unrelenting. And Cecilia merely looked down at Olrin, stone-faced, no longer affected by his final screeches. “No,” she said, her words final. “You are.”

The rift tore open. Pages shredded, story unraveling. His grip slipped and his form flickered, his very edges bleeding into letters that scattered like every other broken thing left. She felt him clutch at her, but the void claimed him, swallowing his voice into silence.

And Cecilia fell—out of the white, through the rip, toward something either known or not.

…

It felt like forever and a blink before Cecilia’s body slammed against the wooden floor, breath punched from her lungs. The journal laid open beside me, its pages blank, every word gone as though it had never been touched.

What followed was silence—Real silence. No voice in the walls, no underlying context whispering in her ear, no narrative pressing on her skull. There was only the creak of wood under her weight and the flutter of her own pulse.

She was free.