The sky rippled like an ink spill as the horizon bent unnaturally, pages from other realities fluttering into the wind. Raj caught one, eyes scanning lines written in a language that bled. "This isn't from our world," he whispered. Kael turned sharply. "Those are pieces of the Black Draft." Elian's face paled. "It's the writer's abandoned masterwork. Every failed timeline, every corrupted arc—compressed into one draft." A thunderous pulse rang through the air, and a jagged tower emerged from the shifting plains. "That's where it's being rewritten," Meera said, jaw tight. "And we're going in."
Inside the tower, walls pulsed like living flesh, script crawling across them as if alive. Aarav held his breath. "This place is made of broken stories." A ghostly scream echoed, and a woman with stitched lips appeared before them, her eyes filled with ink. "Characters," Kael whispered. "Left behind in edits." The woman reached out, trembling. "Stop the Draft. He's writing new endings for every erased soul." Meera asked quietly, "Is that wrong?" The woman's tears turned black. "No. But he's rewriting them all to die." The hallway convulsed violently. "He's feeding Null with perfect tragedies."
They ran deeper into the tower, the walls whispering their names in forgotten fonts. A chamber opened—thousands of floating orbs, each containing a different version of them. Ravi stared at one. Inside, he watched himself die in a burning bookstore. "These are… failed futures," Raj muttered. Elian reached toward a sphere. "We can't let him finish these rewrites. They'll overwrite us." A screech rang out, and a figure descended from the ceiling. Tall. Cloaked. Pen for a hand. "The Scribe," Kael hissed. "He's the Black Draft's guardian." The Scribe turned. "You are unauthorized variables. Prepare for deletion."
The Scribe launched forward, pen-hand slicing through the air, pages folding into razors behind him. Meera deflected with her blade, barely holding ground. Aarav shouted, "He's writing our moves!" Ravi charged in, dodging mid-sentence as his name flickered from the air. "Rewrite this!" he yelled, slamming his fist into the Scribe's chest. The creature staggered but didn't fall. "He's not bound to our laws!" Kael said, flipping through the golden page. "We need to hack the Draft!" Elian's eyes lit up. "Then we crash the story by breaking its syntax!" Raj grinned. "We misspell fate."
Kael scribbled furiously, altering sentence structures in midair. Suddenly, the Scribe froze—his actions stuttering. "Grammar bomb," Meera muttered. "Nice." Elian hurled a rewritten sentence: The Scribe forgets how to read. The creature spasmed and collapsed, pen melting. "We've got minutes," Kael said. "The tower is self-repairing." Aarav nodded. "Let's find the master page." They reached the summit—an obsidian podium holding a single sheet. "The final paragraph of the Black Draft," Meera breathed. "If we erase it, we undo the whole thing." But Ravi hesitated. "What if something inside deserves to live?" Elian looked away.
Behind them, a soft voice spoke: "We do." The stitched woman appeared again—this time with dozens behind her. Lost characters. "We weren't perfect. But we were stories." Meera's hand shook. "We can't destroy them all." Kael flipped the golden page. "What if we… give them their own blank?" She tore a piece from their own story, pressing it to the master page. The paper fused—light erupting. "New beginnings," Aarav whispered. "Even for the forgotten." The tower shuddered violently, collapsing into a swirling cloud of characters flying free, screaming, laughing, crying. The Draft was undone.
They fell from the tower as it dissolved, landing hard on solid ground. The sky calmed. The wind returned. Meera helped Kael up. "We're changing the rules." Raj nodded. "One rewrite at a time." Ravi looked out over the horizon. "We freed them. But Null won't stop." Elian placed a hand on Ravi's shoulder. "Then we write faster. We write harder. And we never write alone." In the distance, a single line wrote itself across the air—unfinished. Waiting. Kael raised the pen. "Time to give it an ending." And they began again.