The Floating Cathedral trembled—
not from wind, not from storm,
but from two stories trying to overwrite each other at once.
The sky below the cathedral was a black ocean of fractured constellations, swirling and screaming as Dominus pulled a quill-shaped blade from his spine—
seven halos orbiting faster, bright enough to sear the retinas of gods.
The other Saints watched from their thrones, breath held, crowns dimmed.
None dared interfere.
Not today.
Kael walked forward.
Barefoot.
Bleeding.
Shadow burning off him like smoke from a living pyre.
His ribs were cracked open—
from where Dominus had "edited" him earlier—
bone petals curling outward like a torn flower,
organs flickering in and out of reality.
VsSST—KRRRICH—
His sternum reknit itself and broke again in the same breath.
He ignored it.
His lungs tasted like copper and broken prayers,
but his voice came steady.
Dominus twirled the quill-blade, halos shrieking like train wheels scraping steel.
"You aren't the author here," Dominus exclaimed, voice shaking the cathedral.
"You are a typo that learned to scream."
Kael inhaled.
The Abyss inhaled with him.
"I'm done being edited," he replied, shadow rippling around his feet like spilled ink crawling uphill.
SFX: THE AIR CRACKS LIKE A BONE.
Dominus lunged first.
The quill stabbed through Kael's shoulder—
shhlkt!
—erasing muscle as it tore, leaving blank parchment where skin should be.
Ink—Kael's blood—splattered upward in a gravityless arc.
Kael staggered, ribs poking through his own chest, breath hitching with a wet crackle.
Veyra roared from behind him—
a sound like a battlefield set on fire—
and charged, thorned fists blooming with arterial fury.
"Get off him!" she barked, slamming her elbow into Dominus' jaw.
Bone shattered.
Golden teeth scattered like coins.
Dominus did not bleed red.
He bled letters—
glowing scripture pouring down his chin.
He wiped it away with one finger.
"You feral ornament," Dominus screeched, backhanding Veyra with a force that folded her ribs like paper.
She hit the wall so hard it caved inward.
Seraphine floated forward, veil burning off.
Her eyes were white suns of grief.
"Enough," she vowed, reaching out—
and her fingertips touched Dominus' next edit mid-air,
unraveling it like thread.
But Dominus snapped his fingers.
Her memories spilled out of her mouth in a scream—
visions of the First Lullaby,
the day her sisters died,
her hands breaking as she tried to hold them all.
She dropped to her knees, shaking.
Kael's vision tunneled.
A voice inside him murmured—
the same one he'd heard in the Hollow,
the one that lived beneath his bones:
Write him out.
Kael clenched his fists.
No.
Not yet.
He still needed to feel this.
Dominus stabbed him again.
Straight through the heart.
SFX: SKRRRRTCHHHHH—!
A sound like a page tearing from the spine of a book.
Kael gasped—
not from the wound,
but from the edit:
Kael Voss never loved anyone.
The world lurched.
Veyra's face flickered away—
gone.
Seraphine's grief dissolved.
Their hands, their voices, their everything—
erased.
Kael dropped to one knee, breath breaking, nails scraping stone until they tore.
"No…" he murmured, eyes wide.
Dominus smiled gently, like a parent correcting a child.
"See?" he explained, tone soft.
"You were never meant for love. Only for hunger."
Kael broke.
Then—
Kael rewrote.
Shadow erupted from his spine, ripping through flesh, each tendril a screaming line of rejected narrative.
Images slammed back into him:
Veyra laughing into his wounds.
Lirien crying into his hair.
Their hands dragging him out of oblivion.
Kael grabbed the quill inside his heart and pulled it deeper, dragging Dominus closer by the blade.
"You don't get to edit that," he growled, voice layered with a thousand dead versions of himself.
Dominus' smile faltered.
For the first time.
Veyra staggered to her feet, coughing blood.
"You try to delete him again," she hollered,
"and I swear I'll wear your halos as a necklace!"
She sprinted, ribs stabbing through skin, thorns exploding outward to form jagged wings.
Seraphine rose alongside her, veil gone, hair lifting like a tidal wave of silver flame.
"We end this," she intoned, palms glowing with counter-lullaby runes.
The Saints in the thrones whispered in terror.
Aurelius trembled.
Belladonna's roses wilted.
Nocturne whispered a future no one wanted to hear.
Dominus spread his halos wide.
"Then die with your mistake."
THE COLLISION
Kael threw shadow.
Veyra threw blood and thorns.
Seraphine threw lullaby-fire.
Dominus threw pure authorship.
The impacts met in the center of the cathedral—
**SFX: AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGH—
A gravitational shriek that made the stars blink.**
Walls peeled away like wet bark.
Stone liquefied.
Time folded.
Space inverted.
Kael's right arm disintegrated to the elbow, bone spiraling away like shredded origami.
Veyra's legs shattered at the shin, thorns bursting from her kneecaps in sprays of black-red.
Seraphine's lungs collapsed, her breath coming out as glowing ash.
Dominus lost three halos instantly—
shattered like glass—
the fragments embedding in his own skull.
He screamed.
A real scream.
Not divine.
Not scripted.
Human.
The blast flung all four combatants in opposite directions.
The cathedral cracked along its spine.
Stars spilled downward like leaking blood.
Kael hit the floor hard enough to break it.
He felt his ribs folding into his lungs.
He tasted ink.
He tasted iron.
He tasted the Abyss whispering:
One more line. One. More. Line.
Across the ruined cathedral, Dominus lay half-buried in rubble—
halos flickering,
body missing its entire left arm and part of his face.
He forced a breath.
"You cannot win," he hissed through broken teeth.
Kael forced himself upright.
"Watch me."
The cathedral began to fall.
The Saints scrambled.
Veyra crawled through blood toward Kael.
Seraphine pushed herself upright on shaking arms.
Dominus staggered, halos reforming—
each one now cracked.
Kael's shadow reached toward Dominus.
Dominus lifted his quill.
Both ready to end the other.
Both ready to die for it.
**The chapter ends here:
Two authors.
One battlefield.
One edit left.
And the Floating Cathedral collapsing around them.**
The next page would decide who wrote the world.
And who was erased.