Eloise's POV
The air crackled around me, thick with the weight of magic, of words unwritten but desperate to take form. The pages—countless pages—floated in the air, glowing with a golden light. My heart pounded in my chest as I realized what was happening.
This wasn't just my power awakening.
This was something far greater.
I had written so many things into existence, changed the course of fate again and again, but never like this. Never this raw, this untamed. The pages were forming on their own, spinning around me like a cyclone of stories yet to be told.
My hands trembled, but not from fear.
From understanding.
I was no longer just a writer shaping a world from the outside.
I was the story now.
The king stumbled backward, shielding his eyes from the brilliance of the magic that surged around me. "What... what is this?" he breathed, his voice laced with something I had never heard from him before—fear.
I turned to face him fully.
"You wanted my power," I said, my voice steady. "You tried to control it. To control me."
The pages fluttered faster, their light pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat.
"But you never understood it. You never could."
The words were forming, flowing from me without ink or quill, writing themselves into the air. A language older than time itself, rewriting the very fabric of reality.
And then—
The chains around my wrists disintegrated into dust.
I felt free.
Truly free for the first time since I had fallen into this world.
The king moved, trying to reach for his sword, but I didn't let him. With a flick of my wrist, the pages surged forward, wrapping around him like vines of light. He struggled, but the more he fought, the tighter they became.
This was my power.
I could end this.
I should end this.
But something held me back.
A presence. A warmth.
I turned my head slightly and met Caius's gaze.
He was watching me, his sword still drawn, but he hadn't moved. He wasn't charging in recklessly or trying to stop me.
He was waiting.
Waiting for me to make my own choice.
Because this was my story.
And he believed in me to finish it the right way.
I exhaled slowly.
The pages shifted, pulling away from the king's throat but still holding him in place. He gasped for breath, his arrogance stripped away, his power meaningless against mine.
"You won't control me," I said, voice softer now but no less firm. "And you won't control anyone else."
With a final surge of magic, the pages rewrote his fate.
Not death.
Not suffering.
Something worse for a man like him—irrelevance.
The power drained from his eyes as his role in the story unraveled, fading into nothing more than a footnote in history.
And just like that—
The battle was over.
I took a shaky breath, my body trembling, exhaustion creeping in.
The pages slowed, their glow dimming, before finally settling into my hands.
It was done.
Caius stepped toward me then, silent at first, before carefully reaching out. His fingers brushed against mine, grounding me, pulling me back from the overwhelming tide of power.
"You did it," he murmured.
I met his eyes, my own vision blurring slightly from the rush of everything that had just happened.
"I think..." I swallowed. "I think I understand now."
"What?"
I closed my fingers around the last of the glowing pages and whispered, "That I was never meant to just write this story."
I looked at him, the weight of realization settling deep in my chest.
"I was meant to live it."
And for the first time, I truly believed it.