Chapter 48: The Writers Who Vanished
The storm didn't stop. For three days and nights, rain lashed the city like a curse—flooding gutters, drumming against windows, turning roads to rivers. But inside the attic, time moved differently. In the world of Flames in the Night, the storm had already begun years ago.
Bea stood at the window, her silhouette outlined by flashes of lightning. Her reflection shimmered in the glass, almost unrecognizable now—like a character she'd written but couldn't control.
Behind her, Nova was pacing. Not writing. Not talking. Just pacing.
"Lys isn't a character," he finally said. "She knows too much. She knew what we did before we ever put it on the page."
Bea didn't turn. "We've crossed a line, haven't we?"
"Maybe," Nova said. "But I'm starting to think the line never existed."
He walked to the desk and opened the folder that held all their plot notes. But the first page was missing. Then the second. Then half the dialogue they'd written for the next five chapters.
It wasn't just gone—it had been replaced.
By someone—or something—writing in their exact tone. Their exact style. Paragraphs they didn't remember writing… but recognized in their bones.
> "They thought their story ended at Chapter 50. But it never had an ending. Not for them. Not for us."
Nova swallowed hard. "Bea… someone's writing us."
She turned to him slowly, her voice a whisper: "Then we need to find the author."
---
The trail led them to a long-abandoned library on the outskirts of the city. It was the kind of place that didn't appear on maps anymore—where dust lay thick over forgotten shelves, and every whisper echoed like it had a memory of its own.
At the back of the building, behind a sealed glass door marked Private Archives, they found it.
A single manuscript. No title. No author. Just a note in delicate handwriting:
> "To the ones I created—finish what I could not."
Bea reached for it, but Nova stopped her.
"This could be the original," he said. "The one that started it all."
She met his eyes. "Then maybe it's time we stop being characters."
Nova hesitated… then nodded. "Let's read."
---
The pages inside were a perfect mirror of their lives. Every kiss, every lie, every fire lit in the name of truth or vengeance—documented in painful, poetic detail. Even things they had never said aloud to each other.
Bea's betrayal at seventeen.
Nova's dream of running, not writing.
The first time they met beneath the ash tree, not in a café as they'd told the world.
They read until the candle burned low.
At the very end was a single line.
> "They vanished after finishing the manuscript. No one ever found them—because they wrote themselves into it."
Bea closed the book.
"We never had a choice," she whispered.
Nova looked at her, eyes full of wonder and fear. "Maybe we did. And maybe the last choice is this—do we finish the story and disappear… or rewrite the ending and break the curse?"
She touched the cover. "What if breaking the curse means breaking us?"
He kissed her forehead. "Then we write the kind of ending we can live with."
And they did.
Together.
Even if it was the last chapter they'd ever write.