The mirror shattered—not with a grand explosion, but a soft shink, like the final thread of a loom snapping. The glass folded inward, not outward, as if the world behind it was inhaling. The Dreamgate pulsed once. Then silence.

Then screaming.

Not from the girls.

Not human.

The voice from beyond wasn't a voice at all. It was an author's pen scratching too fast. A choir of half-written lines and deleted endings howling for attention. It was desperate, manic, furious. It didn't want to be read—it wanted to write. And Verena had just denied it that right.

"I see you," it roared. "I see you all, you glitches, you backspaced corpses—"

"No one's reading your drivel," Sera spat, swinging her blade into the growing rift where the mirror had been. The blade phased through the void but sparked at the edge—like it hit something real.

"It's adapting," Clarina murmured. "It's trying to instantiate itself."

"Then we give it form," Verena said. Her eyes glowed with cosmic glyphs, her body a conduit now for the 13th constellation. "You wanted to enter the story? Fine. But you'll bleed in it too."

The fragments of the mirror floated mid-air, swirling like shards caught in reversed gravity. Each one reflected a distorted version of reality: Evelyn crying beneath a guillotine, Sera burning in a town she tried to save, Beatrice smiling with blood on her teeth. The pasts they never had, the futures it tried to force.

One by one, they stepped forward.

Isolde lifted her hand first. "I bind this gate with Reason."

A spiral of frost formed under her feet, logic incarnate.

Clarina followed. "And I with Duty."

Her blade extended, longer, purer—a perfect form of her family's martial ideal.

Beatrice touched the mirror-light. "And I with Knowledge." Her voice cracked, but her Arcane Trine flared in response.

Sera grinned. "Yeah, yeah. I guess I'm Wrath, huh?" She plunged her sword into the forming gate. "Let me punch the author."

Evelyn stood last. Shaking. Breath caught in her throat. But then her hand lifted—and Balance responded. Not power, not fury. Choice. The stillness before a decision. The weight of all things.

Verena watched them. For a moment, her heart clenched—not with pride, but with conviction.

She stepped forward, her presence swallowing the space.

"You wanted heroines, didn't you?" she said to the gate. "You wanted puppets to dance through your cursed little plot? Well, congratulations. They chose me."

The final shard ignited.

The gate screamed.

And from it poured the Author.

Not a man. Not a woman. Not even a creature.

It was an idea, unformed and flickering—a silhouette of drafts. A thing made of tropes and overwritten prose. Its limbs were pens; its spine, a spiral notebook that flipped open with every move. Its head had no face, only a typewriter's carriage clacking with every syllable.

It pointed at Evelyn first.

"You were never meant to be the lead."

Evelyn stepped forward.

"I know."

The Author recoiled.

"You were supposed to stutter, to break, to be saved."

"I was," she said, and looked at the others. "And then I decided I wouldn't be."

Verena's lips curled. "Evelyn?"

"Yes?"

"Plan B."

Evelyn's Balance magic surged—not in an attack, but in a gravitational shift. The battlefield warped, dragging the Author inward, distorting its form. The rest followed through.

Clarina struck first. Duty cleaved through one of its limbs, severing a pen-arm. The ink inside was thick, tar-black, and screamed.

Sera roared and slammed a boot into its chest. "You want drama?! Chew on this subplot, freak!"

Isolde bound its legs with logic-runes that glowed like contracts. "No deus ex machina for you."

Beatrice channeled a counter-spell through the air, rewriting the Author's narrative in real-time. "Let's fix your pacing problem."

It flailed, distorted, its form glitching between genres—comedy, tragedy, horror, romance—but every shift made it weaker. The story it tried to control was no longer obeying. The characters it wrote now wrote back.

And at the center, Verena stood, calm and radiant.

She looked at the Author, at the writhing amalgam of control and insecurity and envy.

"You wanted a world to love you," she whispered.

"I wanted to matter!" it howled.

"You do. But not like this."

And with that, she reached forward and pressed her hand to its chest.

Not to destroy it.

To rewrite it.

"Author," she said, "Welcome to the story."

The Author burst—not into flame, not into ash, but into words. Pages exploded outward, ink bleeding into constellations. The rift closed, the narrative threads knitting themselves anew.

The world shuddered once.

And then stilled.

The light faded. What remained was silence—no longer the oppressive kind, but the relieved, after-a-storm kind. The Dreamgate was gone. The fractured realm that had once been the Old Wing of Irasios shimmered into a faded shell, shedding illusions like old paint.

They stood in a wide circular chamber now, sunless yet lit by the warm glow of their own magic. Stone pillars, once twisted by narrative delusion, were returning to normal. The air smelled of old parchment and ozone. Like a library after lightning.

Evelyn lowered her hands, chest heaving. Her Balance magic receded slowly, like tides after a storm. Verena turned to her and said nothing, only nodded.

It was enough.

Sera plopped down onto the floor, cradling her sword like a tired dog. "Okay. What the actual hell was that?"

Clarina sheathed her blade, calm but visibly unsettled. "A metaphysical entity born from narrative strain. A manifestation of corrupted authorship. It was trying to rewrite the world from within."

Beatrice smirked. "In simpler terms: a tantrum-throwing editor with god powers."

"I'm more worried it almost won," Isolde muttered. Her logic runes still shimmered faintly across the floor, defensive circles embedded into the marble. "That… thing knew us too well."

Verena finally spoke, brushing the ash of dream-ink from her cloak. "It knew the idea of you. Not you."

Sera raised a brow. "Semantics."

"No," Verena said. "Story magic isn't omniscient. It feeds on archetypes. It thought Evelyn would shatter. That you'd lash out. That Beatrice would turn. That Clarina would break under doubt. It doesn't understand change."

Isolde nodded slowly. "It assumes we're static."

"But we aren't," Evelyn said quietly.

They all looked at her. She stood taller now. The girl who once apologized for breathing now met every gaze with calm certainty.

"I'm not who I was when this started," she said.

"And that," Verena said, "is what saved us."

A beat passed. Then Beatrice coughed. "Poetic. But also, we are still inside a partially collapsed magical hell dimension. Shall we… leave?"

"Please," Sera groaned. "Before the walls decide they want to monologue."

Together, they walked.

The hallways of Irasios trembled as they passed—not in collapse, but restoration. Broken corridors repaired themselves. Dust reversed its fall. The dream logic unraveled, and with it, the pull of narrative manipulation. No more fake choices. No more destined tropes.

They reached the surface just as the first real light peeked through the academy ruins.

A sky.

A real sky.

Blue and infinite.

The kind of sky that didn't feel like it was scripted.

Sera stretched her arms wide and shouted, "We're alive, bitches!"

Isolde sighed. "Yes, thank you for that deeply moving statement."

Verena stepped forward and raised a hand to the wind. Her eyes scanned the horizon. "There's a cost to what we did. The Dreamgate is sealed—but the story is fractured. Pieces of that author's influence remain."

Beatrice narrowed her gaze. "In the world itself?"

Verena nodded. "In the hearts of people who were once characters. We gave them the power to choose. That's freedom. But it also means chaos."

"Isn't that what makes it real?" Evelyn asked.

Verena turned to her and smiled. "Exactly."

They stood in silence for a moment. The kind that wasn't awkward, but earned. Survivors' silence. Friends' silence.

Then Clarina, ever the pragmatist, said, "We should return. The academy will need explanations."

"Oh gods," Isolde groaned. "You mean paperwork."

"Reports," Clarina said with a ghost of a smile. "And testimonies. And possibly a tribunal."

Beatrice smirked. "We did just defeat an eldritch concept of bad writing. I'd say that earns us some leeway."

Sera pulled Evelyn close and ruffled her hair. "Hey, hero. You good?"

Evelyn laughed, breathless but real. "I think so."

And Verena, standing beside them all, felt something loosen in her chest. Not pride. Not relief.

Hope.

It wasn't over.

The world still bent under the weight of stories trying to assert themselves. There were still echoes of that entity out there—tales that wanted to control, to shape people into what they should be.

But now, there were heroines who knew better.

And one villainess who would never let them forget it.

As they made their way down the hill overlooking the academy, Verena glanced back one last time. The ruins stood silent, stripped of illusions, waiting for rebirth. Wind rustled through the grass, and the weight of what they'd survived lingered like smoke. No cheers, no grand reward—just the quiet knowledge that they'd carved space for something real. Evelyn walked ahead, shoulders squared. Sera nudged her playfully. Beatrice rolled her eyes and followed. Clarina walked like she always did: steady. And Verena smiled faintly.

This was not the end of a story. It was the beginning of something unscripted.

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