The sky was no longer blue.
Steven stood beneath a firmament split open, where eyes—vast and ancient—watched from beyond the cosmos. Each one blinked out of sync, like windows into different versions of reality. Their gaze carried no emotion, only judgment. Pure, indifferent judgment.
Atheron gripped his blade tighter. "Those are not creatures. They're observers. Fragments of the Absence's original form. They watch to decide if this reality is still... worth preserving."
Steven's voice was low, his fingers tracing the edge of the Codex glowing at his side. "And if they decide it's not?"
"They rewrite it—by erasing it."
Suddenly, a pulse emanated from one of the larger eyes—warping the sky around it. A being stepped through the ripple: human-shaped, yet wrong. Its skin shimmered like a glitch, and its presence caused the trees around them to decay.
"I am Manus," it said, its voice spoken in multiple tongues at once. "First of the Rejected. Last of the Unwritten."
Steven narrowed his eyes. "You're not from this reality."
"No. But I was promised this one."
In a flash, Manus raised a hand, and a spiral of entropy—black, crawling with whispering sigils—shot toward them. Steven reacted instantly, his Codex flipping open mid-air.
He didn't cast a spell.
He wrote a law:
"Magic shall not decay within this realm."
The spiral struck—but stopped cold, dispersing into harmless motes of light.
Manus tilted his head. "Impressive. You are a Rewriter after all. Then let us duel not as mortals, but as authors of fate."
Steven's staff morphed—becoming quill-like, its tip crackling with runes.
The duel began.
Blades of commandment and verses of annihilation filled the air. Each spell rewrote laws of time, matter, death. One moment the earth was ice, the next it was flame. One moment gravity crushed them, the next it vanished.
Steven gasped as Manus caught him with a phrase of deletion—part of his right arm flickered, becoming transparent.
"Your existence is fragile," Manus whispered.
"But not final," Steven snapped, slamming the Codex shut—reverting all changes in a single breath.
Manus staggered.
Atheron raised his hand. "Steven, finish it. Bind him to this reality. Lock him out of the unwritten!"
Steven wrote a final phrase across the sky:
"All echoes must return to silence."
Chains of pure verse wrapped around Manus. He screamed—a sound that bled color from the trees—before vanishing entirely, absorbed into the Codex.
The sky slowly began to seal itself.
The eyes closed.
But not before a whisper slipped through:
"He is watching."
Steven looked up. "Who?"
Atheron stepped beside him, solemn. "The Origin of Absence. The true author of the void."
Steven clutched the Codex tighter. "Then tel
l him I'm writing my own ending."
----
To be continued