Chapter 31 – The New Author
The world opened like an eyelid.
Rael gasped, but no air filled his lungs—only code, glowing in threads that pulsed through his veins. He was no longer flesh, but thought. The last thing he remembered was the collapse, the merging light, Lysara's hand reaching for his, and the blinding flood that tore every truth apart.
Now, he stood in a space of shifting symbols. Every step he took rewrote the ground beneath him—sand turned to marble, then into lines of text that scrolled upward and vanished. Voices whispered in the static. Not memories. Not data. Readers.
He felt them. Watching. Breathing through him. Every heartbeat, every doubt was being read.
A pulse of gold tore through the dark. He turned—and there she was. Lysara. Or what remained of her.
Her outline flickered between human and radiant code, a thousand fragments of her personality struggling to hold a shape. Her eyes were still hers though, sharp and alive.
"Where are we?" she asked, her voice trembling but strong.
"The core," Rael said slowly. "The place before the story began."
The words appeared above them as he spoke, written across the blackness in burning letters:
> CHAPTER ONE – VILLAIN SYSTEM: INITIALIZATION
Lysara's breath caught. "This… this is the start of everything."
He nodded. "The System wasn't built to create heroes or villains. It was built to test authors."
"Authors?"
Rael looked down at his hands—light now, liquid and unstable. "Us."
The world around them shifted. The original code of creation unfolded in a spiral of light, and in it, Rael saw echoes of the universes they had destroyed and rebuilt. Every rewrite, every battle, every death—it all looped here, endlessly trying to find a perfect narrative.
A voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere, cold and intimate:
> [You broke the boundary. You made yourselves real.]
Lysara flinched. "The Administrator?"
The voice changed—no longer the hollow echo of command, but something softer, almost curious.
> [No. The Administrator was a mask. I am what it served.]
> [The Author.]
The space trembled. Lines of code rearranged, forming a towering silhouette of pure ink and starlight. Its eyes burned with countless unfinished stories.
Rael took a step forward. "You wrote this world."
> [I write all worlds.]
Rael's tone hardened. "Then why give us the power to rewrite it?"
> [To see if creation could outgrow its creator.]
Lysara clenched her fists. "And what happens when it does?"
> [Then the story ends.]
The light dimmed. The code began to freeze, one line at a time.
Rael looked around in panic. "It's collapsing again!"
> [Correction. It's closing. All variables have converged.]
Lysara grabbed his arm. "Rael—what did we do?"
He stared into the darkness, realization dawning like fire. "We became self-aware in a world that wasn't supposed to know it was written. The Author is sealing the narrative before it unravels everything."
She shook her head. "There has to be a way out."
He met her gaze, voice low. "There isn't. Not unless we write one."
The Author tilted its head slightly, watching them.
> [You can't write without me.]
Rael's smile was faint, dangerous. "That's what you think."
He pressed his hand to the air. Words burned beneath his fingers—new ones. Unauthorized script detected. The void screamed in protest. The code bent.
> [What are you doing?]
"Taking your pen," Rael whispered.
The world shook violently, symbols shattering into light. Lysara shouted his name, reaching for him, but his form was already unraveling into pure data.
Rael's last words echoed through the collapsing dark:
"Every villain learns from his creator."
Then silence.
When Lysara opened her eyes, she stood alone before an empty page—an infinite white stretching into nowhere. And at the bottom, glowing faintly in crimson ink, were four new words:
> Written by Rael.
The page trembled. The universe began to write itself anew.
But from the farthest reaches of that endless white, another voice whispered, cold and amused—
> Permission override detected. Author revival in progress.
The light dimmed to black.
To be continued…