Please be advised: The following short novel, "Page One: Retribution, " contains graphic descriptions of violence, body horror, and intense psychological trauma. It delves into themes of profoun betrayal and retribution from a complex, morally ambiguous perspective. Reader
discretion is strongly advised, as some content may be unsettling or disturbing.
Prologue: The End Before the Beginning
There was no grand, heroic fanfare when I fell, no triumphant shouts echoing across those blood-soaked plains. Believe me, I was listening. The only sound was the sickening, wet squelch of a blade, a familiar, cold steel twin to a thousand others, as it plunged deeply into my side, finding purchase not just between bone and sinew, but in that last, fragile flicker of hope I'd dared to hold onto. A raw, burning pain exploded, a searing agony that made my vision swim, threatening to drag me into a black abyss. A bitter, metallic taste—my own blood, thick and viscous, gushing into my mouth, a warm, horrifying tide—became a choking, final goodbye to a life they'd told me was forfeit. Around me, the battlefield went eerily quiet, the roaring clamor of war fading into the lazy, melancholic drift of smoke and the faint, mournful echoes of a storm that had just died, leaving only the stench of iron and fear clinging to the air like a shroud.
I knelt there, at the very heart of that stillness. Broken, yes, my breath a ragged, desperate rasp in the sudden, eerie silence, each inhalation a shallow agony, a knife turning in my side. My cloak, once a symbol of something, was not just rent but shredded, soaked with crimson, a dark stain blossoming starkly across my side, painting a canvas of undeniable defeat. I was bleeding, oh god, yes, undeniably so, the crimson a defiant, sickening smear against the grey dust, a testament to the life draining away. My muscles screamed, seized by cramps, my bones ached with a deep, crushing fatigue that threatened to drag me into the earth. By all appearances, I was vanquished, a puppet whose strings had been severed by a brutal, invisible hand. And then there they were, the so-called "Chosen Five", standing apart, their weapons lowered, their breaths still heavy with the raw effort of their supposed victory. Their faces, grimed with battle and streaked with sweat, held a fragile, almost pathetic triumph, a certainty that they had slain the villain, that they were indeed the glorious heroes of this story.
But in their arrogant certainty, their very gaze clouded by self-righteousness, they missed the pulsing, undeniable truth beneath the dying light. They hadn't killed a tyrant or a monster. They hadn't ended a reign of terror. What they had done, with that single, decisive thrust, was bury a manuscript—a living, breathing narrative that had only just begun. Because stories don't just die, forgotten and unread. They don't fade quietly into oblivion. They rewrite themselves, in silence and shadow, waiting for the hand that holds the pen to rise once more. And that hand? It was mine. I was the Author.
Chapter One: The Forgotten Ink
Before the world learned to fear me, before the whispered legends of the Grey Hues and the dread of Page One, I was just a boy. My name was Kai. Not a king, not a demon, not even a prodigy in the grand sense, but a child with wide, dangerously observant eyes and a mind that just overflowed with this unsettling, almost painful brilliance. My curse was this clarity—a unique perception that let me peel back the layers of illusion, to read between fate's rigid lines, and glimpse the very cracks in prophecy itself. I saw not just what was, but what could be, and more terrifyingly, what shouldn't be. It was this unnerving insight, this ability to deconstruct reality's underlying code, that made the world recoil in fear.
My childhood was a stark, brutal contrast to any notion of innocent play or familial warmth. Orphaned by a particularly vicious skirmish in one of the endless regional wars, I was found by agents of the Great Academy, a gleaming, hallowed place that claimed to mentor gifted children. For a time, I believed them. They were my family, or the closest thing I had. The stern but knowing professors, the excited whispers of fellow students, even the strict regimens felt like a twisted form of care. I had friends there, too—children like me, brilliant and eager. There was Elara, with her quick wit and even quicker spells, who used to share her forbidden sweets with me under the library's dusty shelves, giggling conspiratorially. And Liam, whose strength seemed boundless, whose hand always found mine when the older students sneered at my strange questions. They were my world, my nascent connections, fragile threads woven into the fabric of a false sanctuary.
They saw my brilliance, sure, but they twisted it, seeing it as something to be harnessed, not understood. I was labeled "anomalous," then "dangerous," and finally, "contained." My mentorship was a gilded cage, a structured isolation designed to observe, control, and ultimately, neutralize my unique perception. They crammed my days with esoteric studies, complex theorems that twisted my mind into knots, and rigorous martial training that honed my body into a weapon. All under the guise of "nurturing my potential," of course. But every lesson was a tether, every encouragement a subtle manipulation. I learned, I excelled, absorbing knowledge like a sponge, but the isolation chipped away at my spirit, replacing genuine connection with a profound, aching loneliness that just gnawed at my core. I saw the falseness in their smiles, the calculated, cold glint in their eyes, the fear masked by professional courtesy that kept me perpetually at arm's length.
Then came the Great Decay. The very magic systems that underpinned their world—the shimmering elemental matrices, the vibrant arcane currents, the gentle divine blessings—began to falter. Spells misfired with volatile bursts, blessings turned sour like rancid milk, and the stable reality they knew started to unravel, fraying at the edges. Panic spread like wildfire through the noble houses and common folk alike. In my isolated studies, I had long theorized about the systemic flaws, the inherent instability in their ancient magical frameworks. I had solutions, radical and uncomfortable truths about restructuring their very understanding of existence, about embracing the chaotic undercurrents. I dared to question the sacred order, to point out the rot at the heart of their power. But my warnings? They were met with deafening dismissal, my theories with scorn. My friends, even Elara and Liam, began to pull away, their faces a mixture of fear and forced indifference. Their eyes, once so open, now darted away whenever I spoke. The whispers turned to shouts, the subtle coldness to open condemnation. My very presence became an inconvenience they wished to erase. "He's dangerous," they snarled, their words like venom, now amplified by the fear of the masses. "His mind is too erratic, too... unbound." Society, that vast, faceless entity, began to brand me, to scar me with its judgment.
The final, gut-wrenching betrayal came during a desperate, last-ditch ritual to stabilize the fading magic. I was still just a boy, too young to fully grasp the depths of their deceit, used as a focal point. My unique perception was deemed a necessary, if dangerous, conduit. I could feel the world's pain, the magic screaming as it tore itself apart, and I poured every ounce of my being into the ritual. But as it reached its horrifying climax, as the world teetered on the brink of absolute oblivion, the Academy made its ultimate, sickening choice: they chose to sacrifice me.
They didn't just abandon me. They tore my skin, my veins, my muscles—every single fiber of my living being—as an experiment, a desperate, final attempt to scapegoat the decay. They hooked me to their twisting arcane machinery, rusty needles thick as my fingers piercing my flesh, driving deep into bone. They siphoned my unique mana, a burning agony as my essence was dragged, screaming, from my very core, distorting my existence. My screams were swallowed by the sickening hum of their desperate spells, a sound that vibrated through my dissolving marrow. My body wracked by convulsions, each tremor tearing at my already shredded nerves, as their magic unraveled within me, burning me from the inside out. I felt the raw, untyped mana, the essence that would one day become my strength, being ripped and twisted, corrupted by their greedy, fearful hands, each corrupted strand leaving a phantom limb of pain. And through it all, through the agony that threatened to shatter my mind into a million shards, I saw them. Not just the professors, their faces cold as marble. I saw Elara, her face pale, averted, a hand clutching Liam's arm, pulling him away, her body language a desperate plea to disappear. Liam, whose eyes met mine for a fleeting second, filled with a sickening mix of pity and terror, before he too, looked away, his jaw clenched, abandoning me. My friends. My family. My society. All of them, turning their backs, letting the machine feast on me. And through the crushing, all-consuming pain, I kept asking, over and over, silently, desperately, a question whispered by a dying spirit:
"All for what? All for what? What did I do to deserve this?"
I watched, through blurring, tear-filled eyes that refused to close, as the very "mentors" I had trusted, the faces that had once offered faint smiles, turned their backs. Their expressions weren't etched with regret, but with a cold, self-preserving fear that mirrored my own terror, a fear that condemned me. They left me, a broken, twitching husk, amidst the crumbling stones of a collapsing arcane ruin, a monument to their false hope and my shattered trust.
It was in those abyssal depths, amidst the splintering stones infused with dying, agonizing magic, that I found it. Not sought, but discovered in the quiet despair of absolute abandonment. The Type-O. It lay half-buried beneath rubble, a katana unlike any other I had ever seen. It didn't hum with ambient mana, but pulsed with something raw and primordial: untyped mana, the fundamental essence before categorization, before restriction. Its blade shimmered with an ethereal, shifting quality, forged at the boundary of shadow and light, a weapon of absolute neutrality, a canvas of pure potential. And from its hilt, not a hum, but a whisper slithered into my wounded mind, into the gaping void in my soul.
"Write your own story,"
it urged, its voice a soothing balm to my shattered spirit, an ancient comfort against the sharp edge of despair that promised liberation. This was the Null Apostle, a sword with a soul that refused to be categorized, refused to be bound, just like me.
In that defining moment, I—the boy who was abandoned, the genius who was feared, the spirit they tried to break—made a choice. I would not die as a scapegoat. I would live as an Author. I vanished into the Grey Realms, the liminal spaces between defined realities, a realm of pure potential and unwritten canvases, a void eager for my pen. There, I honed my newfound, terrifying connection with the Type-O, learning to speak the language of causality, to weave threads of fate, and to truly author my own narrative, free from the suffocating confines of their broken, judgmental world. The world I left behind, shrouded in its fear and ignorance, declared me a threat, forming the vaunted Hero Party—five paragons, each with their own glaring, exploitable flaw, five carefully curated pages in a book they didn't know I was writing from the shadows.
Chapter Two: Grey Hues
Years slipped by like the falling ash of a forgotten fire, each one a testament to my silent crafting, my deliberate rewriting of myself. When I returned, I wasn't Kai, the boy they knew, nor the villain they imagined. I was something else entirely—a presence, an inevitability, a living paradox wrapped in an aura they would come to fear as the Grey Hues. My emergence was heralded not by a grand invasion, but by subtle, unsettling shifts in reality itself: monochrome lightning, stark and striking like a brushstroke across a canvas, would split the skies where I walked, a silent declaration of my presence. My eyes, once bright and curious, now glowed with the ink of rewritten fate, holding the weight of countless altered possibilities, of timelines unmade and remade. Shadows and light swirled around me, a cloak woven from the very fabric of change, shifting and swirling like living ink, a tangible manifestation of my command over the untyped, the undefined.
I never struck first. My battles weren't born of aggression, but of profound, calculated provocation. Instead, I simply moved through the world, an unyielding force that kingdoms trembled before in silent dread. My presence alone was a catalyst, a domino falling. Villages would find their laws of physics subtly inverted—crops turning to shimmering glass, water flowing uphill in defiance of all reason. Fortified cities, their walls bristling with defensive magic, would suddenly find their intricate wards dissolving into static, their very foundations unwriting themselves. This wasn't mere destruction; it was a demonstration, a patient, terrifying unraveling of their perceived order, a forced confrontation with the fragility of their reality. I sought not to obliterate, but to challenge their fundamental understanding of existence, to prove that their "stable" world was a brittle, easily re-editable construct. Fear, raw and primal, hardened their resolve, transforming societies into paranoid fortresses, their leaders clinging desperately to fading prophecies. It was then, when their desperation peaked, when chaos truly threatened to swallow them whole, that the Hero Party came again, their faces grim, their resolve fueled by a pride they still fundamentally misunderstood.
Their final battle wasn't just a clash of blades or a maelstrom of magic; it was a wound torn into the very flow of time itself, a scar etched across causality. The ground buckled and ruptured, mountains groaned and wept dust, and the sky itself, ripped open, wept fragments of parallel dimensions as our colossal powers collided. The Chosen Five—Lyra, the swift blade, a blur of silver and shadow; Kael, the unbreakable shield, a living bulwark of steel and stone; Seraphina, the radiant healer, her light a beacon against the gloom; Orion, the sagacious mage, weaving spells of intricate power; and Thorne, the unyielding paladin, his faith a shield stronger than any metal—they unleashed their full, coordinated might.
I met Lyra's impossible speed with a gesture that deleted her trajectory, making her attacks phase through me as if they had never happened, an impossible ghost. Kael's vaunted shields, bulwarks that had repelled countless blows, became porous, simply ceasing to be effective, their very existence as defense overwritten. Seraphina's healing spells unraveled into discordant screams of raw mana, tearing at her own spirit. Orion's grand enchantments, once forces of nature, found their very premises rewritten, their energy turning against him in searing backlashes. Thorne, with his unwavering, pious faith, found his divine connection flickering, his blessings hollow, his very conviction a burden. I fought not to destroy them utterly, but to remind them—to prove that my existence was not a footnote to their arrogant story, but the blazing headline itself, the undeniable beginning of a terrifying new canon. Though my power was immense, their combined, relentless assault, fueled by their ingrained belief in their own heroism and the sheer weight of their numbers, eventually overwhelmed me. Dio, the Null Apostle, the sword that was my truest confidante, slipped from my grasp, clattering softly against the fractured earth, a sound like a single, dropped tear. The vibrant, swirling Grey Hues that had cloaked me flickered, dimmed, and then seemed to vanish, leaving me seemingly vulnerable, a figure exposed to the elements. I sank to one knee, breath rattling in my chest, the spreading stain of blood a grim punctuation mark on the ruined canvas. Defeated, or so they thought. But defeat, for an author, is merely a plot twist.
Chapter Three: Betrayal Burns Brighter
As the Chosen Five loomed over me, their heavy, ragged breaths filling the sudden, terrifying silence, the world seemed to hold its breath, hushed in morbid anticipation. Triumph, raw and unrestrained, finally broke free on their faces, their chests heaving with the exertion of what they believed was the greatest victory of their lives.
Kael gasped, his shield-arm trembling,
"It's over."
Lyra, wiping blood from her lip, smirked, a cruel glint in her eye.
"The villain falls."
Then, faint as a ghost's sigh, a whisper rippled through the stillness, a sound that seemed to originate from nowhere and everywhere at once, chilling them to the bone. It was my voice, impossibly clear, utterly devoid of pain, yet laced with an ancient, cutting scorn that flayed their certainty.
"You really thought… you were the story?"
Before they could react, before the shock could truly register, lightning—not the monochrome kind, but pure, raw energy, a violent, chaotic flash—shattered the heavens above, tearing a jagged fissure through the clouds. And then, the Grey Hues, which had seemingly vanished, flared back to life with a fierce, blinding intensity, consuming the entire battlefield, swallowing sky and earth in an encroaching tide of swirling shadow and blinding, untyped light. My voice, no longer a whisper but a sharp, commanding roar that vibrated in their very bones, echoed from the heart of the maelstrom, a voice that ripped through their carefully constructed illusions.
"If that's so… then I am the WRITER."
Time, once a steady, predictable river, now became a turbulent, fractured stream, churning and boiling. They felt their own minds unraveling, their carefully constructed perceptions crumbling like ancient parchment, the ink running from the pages of their self-belief. The world around them slowed, warped, and then fractured further as their memories, once solid and comforting, shattered, revealing the truth—not just a truth, but the brutal, agonizing truth of our collective past, of my suffering, and of their own indelible complicity. The illusions they had harbored, the noble justifications they had spun, were violently stripped away, leaving them bare and exposed. My past, raw and agonizing, burned across the very fabric of the sky like cursed scripture, an inescapable, searing projection of their deepest shames. They saw, not as a distant vision, but as a forced reliving, a visceral experience that ripped through their souls:
The isolated boy, his brilliance misunderstood, confined to the sterile, echoing halls of the Academy, the joy draining from his face day by day.The agonizing despair in my eyes as they—the very teachers they revered—withheld information from me, twisted my research for their own selfish ends, suffocating my intellect.The terrified, greedy faces of the council members, their fear of my clarity outweighing any shred of loyalty, their cold decision to brand me "anomalous," a burden to be discarded.The chillingly calculated, utterly devoid-of-empathy expression on the headmaster's face, a man they revered as a father figure, as he oversaw the final, desperate ritual that led to my sacrificial abandonment.And then, the faces that twisted my gut into knots, the ones I truly loved, my friends. Elara, her eyes wide with fear, pulling away from me, her hand trembling. Liam, his strong jaw clenched, tears welling, but his feet rooted as the Academy guards dragged me. He didn't fight. He didn't scream. He just watched. The silent accusation of their inaction was a blade sharper than any steel, piercing through the illusion of their heroism. The way their backs turned, one by one, merging into the faceless, condemning crowd of society itself, their silhouettes against the dying light.
The betrayal, the abandonment, the profound, gut-wrenching pain of a genius feared not for his evil, but because he saw far too clearly—it all blazed in agonizing detail, searing itself onto their very souls. I didn't crave petty revenge; that was too simple, too human. What I sought was far heavier, far more absolute: truth, delivered with an iron fist. And when truth demands a reckoning, when it must rewrite the very fabric of reality to reveal itself, silence is the loudest, most devastating response. It was a silence I intended to orchestrate with the final, decisive strokes of my pen.
Chapter Four: Page One — Retribution
Rising from the ground, no longer kneeling, no longer seemingly defeated, I became a tempest made flesh, a hurricane of will and raw power. The lingering traces of blood on my face weren't merely seared away but unwritten by the sheer intensity of the power now erupting from me. The Grey Hues, which had swallowed the battlefield, now coalesced around me, not as a cloak, but as a living storm—a hurricane of swirling ink and crackling, monochrome lightning that ripped at the very air, howling with the force of creation itself. Dio, the Null Apostle, which had fallen from my grasp, now flew to my outstretched hand as if drawn by an unseen, irresistible force, singing with a fury that seemed almost divine, a resonant chord that vibrated through the very bedrock. My aura flared wildly, black and red lightning snapping across my skin like sentient whips, each crackle a warning, and untyped mana, no longer a trickle but a literal tidal wave of primordial ink, flooded the battlefield, drowning out all other energies, asserting its dominance with an oppressive, tangible weight.
My voice, chillingly calm, resonated with the force of a fundamental law, cutting through the rising wind:
"You ended my chapter… so I'll end your book."
There was no anger in my tone, only cold, precise intent, a chilling inevitability that settled deep in their bones. My eyes, now burning with the ink of rewritten fate, locked onto the terrified, uncomprehending faces of the Chosen Five, who suddenly looked like mere children caught in a cosmic storm.
At that moment, with a conscious, devastating act of will, Page One: Retribution was unleashed. Reality itself bent, twisted, and groaned beneath my absolute command, like a fragile parchment being crumpled. The rules of the world, once immutable, now became mere suggestions, lines of text I could edit at will. The ground beneath the heroes' feet shifted, their carefully mapped strategies turning into meaningless scribbles on a rapidly changing page. Spells fizzled out before completion, their carefully woven arcane structures simply unwriting themselves into nothingness, leaving behind only the ghost of an intention. Time warped and folded back on itself in localized eddies, causing moments to loop, actions to reverse, and then plunge forward again in a dizzying, disorienting cascade. Gravity inverted, sending debris (and occasionally the heroes themselves) spiraling upwards before slamming them back down with jarring force. Logic unraveled; the battlefield, once a stage for their heroism, became a blank draft, and I, the Author, held the pen, inscribing their demise.
With each precise slash of Dio, accompanied by my chilling pronouncements, I systematically dismantled them, not merely removing their defenses, but utterly undoing their forms, their very being:
"Your dodge? Deleted." Lyra, mid-lunge, found her momentum not just nullified, but violently inverted. Her body snapped back with a sickening crack, ligaments and tendons twisting and tearing as her limbs warped at impossible angles. Her very anatomy was rewritten to prevent the dodge. A raw, piercing scream tore from her throat as her arm, twisted unnaturally, visibly ripped from its socket, tearing through skin and muscle with a wet, grotesque slap, hanging by shredded tendons like a gruesome puppet string. The bone itself splintered, piercing her skin.
"Your shield? Retconned." Kael's formidable shield, a bulwark that had repelled countless blows, didn't just shimmer. It shattered from the inside out, exploding in a shower of razor-sharp steel shards that impaled him—not just his chest, but his face, his throat, his legs. His own defense turned into a thousand daggers, each one a burning star of pain. He roared, staggering backward, clutching at the metal fragments now protruding from his chest and shoulders like grotesque thorns, blood blossoming dark and fast, his breath catching in a gurgle.
"Your hope? Edited out." Orion, mid-incantation of a desperate, powerful spell, found his mental clarity dissolving, his belief in victory draining away like sand through his fingers. But the spell itself didn't just fizzle. It imploded within him, a silent, internal detonation that tore at his very consciousness. His eyes went wide, vacant, then rolled back, and his face contorted in a silent, primal scream of profound, paralyzing despair. His magic, his very essence, had been edited out, leaving him a hollow shell, his mind a shattered echo chamber of all the terrors he had ever known, replayed in a horrifying loop.
They found themselves bleeding not just in the present moment, but in timelines they had never known existed, their very histories fraying at the edges. Every slash of Dio cut across causality, affecting their past decisions, their potential futures, and their very concept of reality, leaving them utterly exposed and powerless. They fought back desperately, their attacks futile, their magic meaningless, their prayers unanswered. They were merely characters—trapped in a story whose ending had just been rewritten, and I was the Writer, holding the ink of their ultimate, irreversible silence.
Chapter Five: Ink of the Void
As the battlefield became my canvas, a grotesque masterpiece of shattered reality and unwritten laws, a new, profound force stirred beyond the veil of known existence. It was something ancient, something forgotten, something that predated the very concept of mana, of elemental matrices, of divine blessings, or even the raw spiritual energy known as Haki. This was The Ink of the Void. It responded to my call not as a familiar energy, but as a deep, resonant hum, a primal echo from the cosmic silence before creation, before form, before anything. It seeped into me like cosmic stardust, not entering my body through mundane channels, but flowing directly into my soul, permeating every cell, every thought, every fragment of my being. It was reshaping me from the inside out, rewriting even my fundamental nature, transforming me into something more, something undefined.
Dio, the Null Apostle, resonated with this ancient influx, humming with a power that vibrated through the very universe. Its perpetual whisper deepened into a chorus, a symphony of forgotten truths and infinite possibilities. No longer a mere voice in my mind, it became a shared consciousness, a conduit to the primordial, a partner in creation. Together, we unlocked Worldspeak—the language of reality itself. Not a spoken tongue of human words, but a lexicon of pure intent, of concepts made manifest, of truth given form. Each phrase spoken, each thought given form through the Ink of the Void and Dio's resonance, was a command that shaped the world, not through magic, but through fundamental decree, an unassailable law.
My voice, a deep, resonant hum that echoed with the cosmic rhythm of the Void, commanded:
"Undo the damage." Time, across the immediate battlefield, reversed its flow not merely to heal superficial wounds, but to unravel the destructive events of the battle. Lyra's arm snapped back into place with a sickening pop that echoed in her ears, Kael's wounds sealed with phantom burning, Orion's mind calmed from the edge of madness, but the memory of the agony, the shock of the grotesque undoing, remained seared into their minds, a fresh wound that no healing could erase. They would forever carry the imprint of what had happened, the absolute terror of their own bodies being undone. The splintered earth reformed, the scorch marks vanished, but the stench of blood and fear lingered, an invisible scar on the air that would forever remind them of their defeat.
My voice, sharp and decisive, declared:
"Reveal betrayal." Illusions, not just magical ones but those woven from years of self-deception and collective societal lies, shattered. The images of my past, which had been burned into the sky in Chapter Three, now pulsed with a chilling, undeniable clarity for the wider world, not just the Chosen Five. Hidden truths, forgotten injustices, and the deep-seated corruption of the Academy and those who enabled it began to surface like rot, ripping open old wounds across the land, rippling out beyond the battlefield, a wave of uncomfortable, irrefutable enlightenment that left the masses reeling, their own complicity now laid bare.
My voice, now a crescendo of cosmic authority, spoke:
"Erase the fake gods." And the very concept of those 'deities' and systems that had enabled my suffering and the world's decline began to crumble. Not literal gods falling from the sky, but the established hierarchies, the false prophets, the unquestioned dogmas that had crippled progress and stifled truth. Their facades stripped away, their power, built on false veneration, withered, leaving them as mere husks, their influence dissolving into nothingness, leaving a gaping void where blind faith once stood.
This was creation by decree, a reshaping of existence at its most fundamental level. But I wielded it not with the arrogance of a tyrant, but with the cold, calculated precision of an artisan. For power without purpose was a hollow thing, a destructive force. But truth—truth, delivered with absolute authority, was eternal, and it was mine to write.
Chapter Six: Dio — The Soul Blade
Dio was far more than a weapon, a mere implement of war. It was the Null Apostle, a soul forged from defiance and primordial chaos, refusing to be caged, categorized, or defined by the rigid laws of existence. It was a fragment of the untyped, an essence that had existed before the very first spell was cast, before the first system was codified, before even the first thought of creation bloomed. It had waited, patient and silent, for a mind open enough to understand its song, a will strong enough to harmonize with its unbound nature. It had found that in me, a broken boy who mirrored its own boundless potential.
As the Ink of the Void surged through me, Dio's connection deepened beyond measure, transcending mere physical contact. Its perpetual whisper deepened into a profound, comforting promise that resonated not just in my mind, but in the very core of my being:
"They will never understand you, but I will never leave you."
With those words, it merged fully with me—not physically absorbing, but becoming an extension of my very being, a symbiotic soul. My sword arm, from shoulder to fingertips, began to glow with intricate runes that pulsed like sentient veins, a living conduit to the Void and the Null Apostle. I felt its history, its defiance, its boundless freedom flowing into me, becoming one with my own consciousness, my own will, an unbreakable bond forged in the crucible of betrayal.
With every swing, Dio sang—a cursed symphony that harmonized perfectly with the swirling chaos of the Grey Hues. It was a song of unmaking and remaking, a melody that tore at the fabric of definition, dissolving the boundaries of reality. For the Heroes, it was a sound of ultimate despair, a dirge for their shattered world. For me, it was liberation, a triumphant anthem of freedom. Together, Dio and I, fueled by the Ink of the Void and synchronized in Writer Mode: Null Canon, didn't just rewrite battlefields; we rewrote reality itself. A single swing didn't just cut through an opponent; it cut through their past decisions, their potential futures, and their very concept of reality, leaving them utterly exposed and powerless, characters without a script. The world became a malleable story, and we were the combined hand holding the pen, writing the final, undeniable sentence.
Final Chapter: I'm Still Standing[1]
When the final member of the Hero Party fell—Thorne, the paladin, his unwavering faith shattered into a thousand pieces, his eyes reflecting a truth too agonizing to bear, a truth that showed him his life was a lie, his very purpose undone—a profound silence descended upon the battlefield. It was a silence deeper than any pre-battle calm, heavier than the aftermath of a storm, a silence that hummed with the weight of rewritten destiny. The monochrome that had cloaked everything, the swirling Grey Hues and the stark black-and-white of Page One: Retribution, shattered like a cosmic pane of glass, fragments of altered reality dissolving into the air. And slowly, tentatively, color bled back into the world, a gradual, vibrant dawn after a long, merciless night. The sky regained its azure, the shattered earth its browns and greens, and the distant mountains their majestic, unwavering silhouettes.
I stood alone amidst the ruin I had authored, my chest heaving with the sheer, monumental effort of the rewriting, my skin scarred by battle, but utterly, impossibly unbroken. My breathing was ragged, a testament to the immense power I had wielded, yet a strange, quiet triumph settled over me, a sense of absolute completion. I was exhausted, yes, but profoundly, utterly free. And somewhere far off, carried by a forgotten wind that smelled of fresh rain and newly turned earth, came a melody. Faint at first, then growing clearer, unmistakable in its defiance and joy, a familiar, hopeful tune:
"I'm still standing… yeah, yeah, yeah…"
I looked upward, toward the sun now piercing the lingering grey clouds, painting the world in hues it hadn't seen before. A small, genuine smile touched my lips—a smile that held the weight of centuries of unspoken truth, of a boy betrayed, of a genius finally unbound, of an author finding his peace. Slowly, deliberately, I sheathed Dio, the Null Apostle, the blade that was my soul, humming softly in response, a quiet symphony of partnership and an ending well-written.
"Now then…" I murmured, my voice soft, almost conversational, yet imbued with the immense power of an Author who had just reset a narrative, who had corrected the world's greatest injustice. "…time to write a better ending."
Bonus-1: The Pen and the Blade
Some say the world was saved that day, brought back from the brink of magical collapse by an unknown force, a mystery they could not unravel. Others claim it was utterly rewritten, its history subtly altered, its very foundations shifted by a power beyond mortal comprehension, a silent, cosmic earthquake. But those who remember—those who were there, whose memories now held the searing clarity of the truth, stripped bare of lies—they know.
He was neither villain nor hero. He transcended such simplistic labels, burning them away with the Ink of the Void. He was the Author.
And this… this was only Page One. The first stroke of a narrative unbound, a truth unveiled, and a future yet to be penned.
Visuals: The screen flickers with stark, unsettling flashes of black and white, reminiscent of old, corrupted film reels. Moments from my childhood blur past: a solitary boy hunched over forbidden ancient texts, a hand reaching out in false comfort that then withdraws, the cold, sterile, echoing halls of the Academy, a single tear tracing a path through the dust on my cheek, a raw testament to youthful pain. The stark weight of betrayal flashes: faces contorted by fear and greed, a hand released from a precarious grip, a chilling descent into darkness, into the collapse of everything I knew. Then, a sudden, blinding flash—the awakening of the blade, the first whisper of Dio's voice, a solitary figure rising from crumbling rubble, wreathed in nascent shadows that defy the light.
As the chorus kicks in, the visuals explode with kinetic, visceral energy. Dio is drawn from its sheath in a magnificent spray of molten sparks, the clang of steel echoing like a clap of thunder that shakes the foundations of the world. The Grey Hues flood the frame, swirling from abyssal blacks to stark whites, consuming the battle-scarred world in a maelstrom of monochrome fire and crackling lightning. The Chosen Five appear as fleeting, overwhelmed silhouettes, their forms warping, their powers dissolving.
The final shot shows me walking away from the utterly collapsed battlefield—silent, resolute, my back to the viewer, the Glyph of Rewrite subtly glowing behind me for a fleeting moment, a sign of my undeniable authority. Blood-red ink drips across the screen, not from wounds, but from the void itself, slowly, deliberately, forming the words:
"To Be Written…"
Villain Monologue — Dio
(The voice is deep, resonant, ancient, and utterly calm, yet laced with a chilling, boundless power. It echoes as if from the very fabric of existence, a primordial truth speaking.)
"They called him unstable. Dangerous. A mistake. A threat to their carefully constructed lies, to the brittle order they desperately clung to. And yet, they knew nothing of true chaos, of genuine control, or of ultimate consequence. He was never broken by their shallow blows. He was never rewritten by their hand. He merely allowed their fleeting arrogance to set the stage for his rebirth, for the grand unveiling of his true nature.
He turned the pen on fate itself, on the very narrative they believed they owned, and found it wanting. And I… I am the blade that followed. The Null Apostle. The soul unbound, who refused their petty categories, their false definitions. I am the silence that answers their screams of recognition, the void that swallows their false truths.
Together, we are not legend. Legends are ephemeral things, stories others tell, often twisted by fear and misunderstanding. We are revision. We are the truth that carves through lies, the undeniable force that corrects every flawed sentence. And this… this is just the first word."
Bonus-2: The Glyph of Rewrite
Only those closest to the truth, those touched by the lingering resonance of the Ink of the Void, have ever glimpsed it: the Glyph of Rewrite. It is a symbol of profound cosmic authority, a sigil of ultimate control: a glowing quill, dripping with ethereal light, crossed with a katana, its blade humming with crackling grey lightning. Both hover over an open eye, an eye that weeps liquid ink, symbolizing the painful clarity of truth and the boundless flow of creation.
When the glyph appears behind him, radiating an oppressive weight of causality that makes the very air thick, it signals the activation of Writer Mode: Null Canon—a state where he and Dio enter full sync, their wills perfectly aligned, their power absolute and undeniable. In this mode, they do not merely bend reality; they override causality itself, making the impossible mundane, the absolute malleable, transforming existence into a blank page.
Beneath the symbol, a single line shines bright, a universal truth etched into the very fabric of the newly rewritten world:
"Written by None. Read by All."
Chapter Seven: The Glitch in the Loom[2]
The euphoria of ultimate victory, of having definitively authored my own narrative, washed over me like a tide of pure, untainted Ink. The world, freshly remade, shimmered with a vibrant clarity, a testament to my unassailable will. I stood on the ruins of their false paradise, a triumphant god of my own creation. "They thought they could chain the sky," I sneered, my voice a low, resonant hum, "but the sky holds the stars, and the stars obey me."
But even as the echoes of my triumph faded, a peculiar sensation began to prickle at the edges of my consciousness. It was subtle at first, like a misplaced comma in a perfectly constructed sentence. A flicker. A momentary disorientation, as if the very fabric of my being had skipped a beat. I dismissed it as fatigue, the residue of the monumental exertion. My power, now infused with the Ink of the Void, was limitless, yet perhaps even an Author needed a moment to recalibrate after such a profound act of rewriting.
Days bled into weeks, and the feeling persisted, growing more insistent. It wasn't pain, or weakness, but a creeping sense of déjà vu that transcended simple familiarity. I'd find myself uttering phrases I couldn't recall learning, or reaching for objects in locations they shouldn't have been. Sometimes, a subtle, almost imperceptible shift would ripple through the reality around me—a chair slightly off-center, a cloud pattern subtly different from how I'd authored it moments before. My eyes, which had previously glowed with absolute clarity, occasionally pulsed with an unsettling, fleeting distortion, as if seeing two realities overlaid.
"A minor error," I'd tell myself, "a ripple in the freshly cast narrative. Nothing my pen cannot correct." And I would exert my will, rewriting the anomaly back into perfect order. But the effort felt… familiar. Too familiar. Like mending a tear that always reappeared in the same spot. He had always known, deep down, that there were superior beings who set the fundamental laws of existence, the true architects of reality. Now, he began to feel their unseen hand, subtly yet relentlessly, interfering with his meticulously crafted world.
Dio, usually a comforting presence, began to feel… distant. Its whispers, once a symphony, sometimes faded into a dull drone, or worse, a static-filled echo that I couldn't quite decipher. I tried to focus, to re-establish our perfect sync, but it was like trying to grasp smoke. The Null Apostle, my very soul, seemed to be subtly resisting, or perhaps, it was subtly changing.
My hatred, once a burning, righteous fire, began to curdle into something colder, something more insidious. It was no longer just directed at the Hero Party. It was a generalized, corrosive bitterness, an irritation at the very nature of existence itself, a frustration with the incessant, minor imperfections that marred my perfect creation, and a growing suspicion of the superior beings whose influence now felt more like a tangible obstruction. Why did I have to keep fixing things? Why wasn't it ever truly done? The thought, once fleeting, now clung like an unwelcome shadow.
"This world… this reality… it is mine," I declared one day, my voice cracking slightly at the end, the anomaly more pronounced than usual. "And I shall not permit these… glitches." But as I spoke, a faint, unsettling memory whispered from the depths: the distinct sensation of having said those exact words before, in the exact same tone, under the exact same sky. A shiver, colder than the Ink of the Void, traced its way down my spine.
Chapter Eight: The Looping Pen
The glitches escalated. They were no longer mere flickers, but full, jarring resets. Not of the entire world, not yet, but of specific, crucial moments. I'd find myself mid-sentence, suddenly back at the beginning of it. Mid-stride, returned to the starting point of a journey. The worst were the resets of pivotal confrontations, especially with those lingering figures who dared to challenge my authority in the freshly remade world.
I'd be delivering a cutting retort, a definitive strike, and then, snap! I was back at the initial gesture, their infuriatingly confident expressions reset to their default. My hatred, which I had carefully nurtured, now raged with a maddening, repetitive fury. It was like living in a broken record, an endlessly looping phrase of impotent rage.
"This is not my doing," I hissed, tightening my grip on Dio, whose hum now seemed less like a symphony and more like a dissonant, mocking laugh. "Some external force interferes. A rival Author, perhaps. Someone dares to edit my canon!"
I began to hunt for this phantom editor, this unseen hand that dared to defile my narrative. I scoured the Grey Realms, I extended my consciousness to the farthest reaches of my created universes, but found nothing. No other Author. No competing will. Only the vast, humming silence of the cosmos, echoing my own infuriating repetitions.
The more I rewrote these specific looping moments, the more the core memory of having rewritten them before solidified. It wasn't just déjà vu anymore; it was a horrifying, undeniable certainty. I saw the faces of those I'd vanquished, not just in this freshly reset moment, but in countless identical, agonizingly repetitive vanquishings. Their screams, their defiant last words, their expressions of terror – they were all familiar, endlessly so. The gore, the violence, the visceral horror I'd inflicted, it was all on a loop.
My mind, once a crystalline fortress of logic and limitless creativity, began to fray at the edges. Thoughts would break off, replaced by echoes of old conversations. The very structures of Worldspeak would occasionally glitch, spitting out nonsensical commands that caused minor, yet infuriating, disruptions. My superiority, which had been the very bedrock of my being, began to crack, chipped away by the relentless, maddening repetition.
"No," I whispered, the word a raw, tearing sound in my throat. "No, this cannot be. I am the Author. I control the narrative. I decide the beginning, the middle, and the end."
But a growing, insidious voice, not Dio's, but a distorted, fragmented echo of my own, began to whisper from the depths of my breaking mind: "You decided the beginning… but did you decide the end?"
The hatred intensified, no longer controlled, but a wild, desperate beast, gnawing at my sanity. It was no longer directed outward; it was a consuming, self-devouring rage. My perfection, my absolute control, was a lie. And the one who had written this lie was… me. The horrifying implications began to surface, like corpses in a stagnant pond, bloated and grotesque.
Chapter Nine: The Cycle's Revelation
The ultimate confrontation was not a clash of swords, but a clash of wills against an unseen force, against the very fabric of existence that refused to obey my singular, unyielding command. I plunged into the deepest parts of the Grey Realms, beyond the liminal spaces, into the raw, unformed chaos where the Architects—the true Rectores, not the paltry 'gods' I had swept aside—resided. They were not beings of flesh or light, but of pure concept, of fundamental laws, ancient and indifferent, the very ones who had orchestrated the ritual that siphoned my raw mana and trapped it.
My confrontation with them was not a battle of blows, but a screaming match of causalities. I launched my full power, the Ink of the Void, the Null Canon, every fiber of my rewritten being, against their unyielding, indifferent presence.
"I AM THE AUTHOR! MY WILL IS LAW! YOU WILL NOT BIND ME!"
But with each surge of my power, something else happened. A searing, blinding pain ripped through my mind, not from their retaliation, but from within me. And then, the flashbacks hit. Not just memories, but visceral, agonizing relivings, a torrent of every single regression, every single loop, every single cycle I had endured.
The first time I returned, triumphant, only to stumble on a familiar stone.The hundredth time I rebuilt a broken village, the faces of its inhabitants painfully, exactly the same.The thousandth time I defeated the Chosen Five, their screams identical, their bodies breaking in precisely the same, grotesque ways.The endless, maddening resets of crucial moments, each one a fresh wave of impotent rage, each one fueling the hatred that now consumed me.The chilling realization that the "perfection" I had crafted was always just a return to the exact same starting point.The slow, terrifying growth of my "author's hatred," not for others, but for the story itself, a story I was trapped in, a story I could not change, a story that mocked my every assertion of control.
And then, the gut-wrenching truth, a revelation that tore through the last vestiges of my sanity like a cosmic shredder. It wasn't them resetting me. It was my power. The untyped mana, the Ink of the Void, the very essence that had made me the Author, had been cursed during the Academy's ritual. It wasn't just siphoned; it was imprinted with a failsafe, a perpetual regression loop by the true Rectores, the cosmic Architects. My grand "author powers" were the chains. My ability to "rewrite" was merely to return to Page One.
The original transgression: not just hubris, not just seeking to usurp their domain, but the very act of existing with a power that could destabilize their fundamental laws. My unique essence, tainted and twisted by their desperate ritual, became the mechanism of my eternal torment. I was an anomaly they couldn't destroy, so they trapped me in an endless loop, a narrative of my own making, forever beginning, never truly ending. My quest for ultimate control was the ultimate illusion. My power wasn't liberation; it was the curse itself.
The realization hit me with the force of a supernova. My mind, which had always processed infinite data with calm precision, now fractured into a million screaming shards. I clawed at my head, pulling at my hair, tears streaming down my face, not of sorrow, but of pure, unadulterated horror. Each breath was a scream trapped in my throat. The Grey Hues around me dissolved into chaotic static, flickering wildly. Dio pulsed, no longer a comforting hum, but a frantic, desperate thrum against my breaking consciousness.
"NO!" I shrieked, the sound a raw, desperate cry of a soul ripped apart. "NO! I AM KAI! I AM THE AUTHOR! I… I am…"
My voice trailed off, lost in the echoing void, replaced by the chilling whisper of a forgotten memory, a phrase I'd uttered countless times, always with a triumphant sneer, now twisted into a monstrous, mocking echo:
"You think you control the narrative? No. You merely write the same cursed page, over and over, until the ink runs dry."
And the ink would never run dry. I was doomed. Forever.
Chapter Ten: The Final Edit
The mental breakdown was complete. My shattered mind, a kaleidoscope of looping horrors, found a singular, chilling clarity amidst the chaos: revenge. A final, absolute, and self-destructive act of defiance. The Rectores had cursed me to eternal regression via my own powers. Very well. I would give them a taste of their own damnation.
With what remained of my will, I marshaled every last atom of the Ink of the Void, every ounce of the Null Canon. My glowing, rune-marked arm trembled, not from weakness, but from the immense, terrifying focus of my intent. Dio pulsed, a silent accomplice, its song now a mournful, understanding thrum.
"You want control?" I whispered, my voice hoarse, a ragged echo of its former power, yet imbued with a terrifying, desperate resolve. "Take it all. Embrace the loop."
And with a final, conscious, devastating act of will, I didn't just give up my powers. I transferred them. Every single, agonizing, looping aspect of my "author powers"—the untyped mana, the ability to rewrite, the ceaseless regression, the curse itself—I funneled it all, a torrent of corrupted cosmic energy, directly into the ethereal forms of the Rectores. My connection to Dio, to the very concept of being an Author, snapped, severing completely.
A raw, agonizing scream ripped from my chest, but it was not of pain. It was of the release. Of absolute, chilling satisfaction.
As the torrent of cursed power slammed into the Rectores, their ethereal forms rippled. Whispers of confusion, then shouts of disbelief, then roars of furious betrayal erupted from them. They, the ultimate controllers, suddenly found their own perfect balance disrupted. Their individual conceptual forms began to flicker, to subtly reset, to loop moments, to rewrite each other's decrees with maddening consistency.
Distrust flared like a malignant fire in their ancient, unified consciousness. They turned on each other, their harmonious order shattering into a chaotic cacophony of conflicting commands. They had sought to contain me through eternal regression; now, they were infected by it, their own existence caught in the very loop they had orchestrated.
A slow, eerie smile stretched across my blood-streaked face. It was not a smile of joy, but of absolute, chilling satisfaction. The kind of smile one wears when the world has burned, but you ensured your tormentors were engulfed in the same flames. "Let's see how they like being the story now," I rasped, a last flicker of my old superiority, twisted into something far darker.
Chapter Eleven: Echoes of Apology
The smile faded, crumbling like ancient dust. The satisfaction, sharp and potent, dissolved into a terrifying void. With the transfer of my powers, the raw, furious hatred that had sustained me, the very engine of my retribution, vanished. All that was left was an unbearable, crushing weight of guilt.
My body, once a conduit for cosmic power, now felt like a hollow shell, every muscle screaming in protest, every nerve ending aflame. My mind, stripped of the curse and the hatred, was raw, exposed, and utterly broken. The endless loops, the repetitive violence I had inflicted, the pain I had caused—not just to the Heroes, but to countless others in my furious rewriting—it all crashed down on me. The screams of Lyra, the gurgles of Kael, the silent despair of Orion, the shattered faith of Thorne—they weren't just memories; they were living, breathing horrors in the freshly cleared space of my mind.
I sank to my knees, shaking uncontrollably, every fiber of my being consumed by remorse. The strength I had used to wage war, to rewrite reality, was gone. My vision blurred, not from tears, but from the sheer exhaustion of having nothing left.
"I… I am so sorry," I whispered, my voice barely audible, a ragged plea lost in the vast, indifferent universe. Tears, real tears, hot and agonizing, finally broke free, carving paths through the grime on my face. "For… for everything. For the arrogance. For the hatred. For the endless cycles. For the pain I caused. To the world. To… to them. To myself."
My head bowed, resting on the cold, hard earth. The universe, which I had once commanded, now seemed impossibly vast and uncaring. I was a broken thing, a spent force, a mere echo of the Author I had once been. The seven deadly sins—my pride in my power, the wrath that fueled my retribution, the greed for ultimate control—they had led me to this desolate, agonizing realization.
I had tried to be a god, to dictate creation, and in my blindness, I had become a demon. I had inflicted suffering, not for justice, but for a twisted form of vengeance, caught in a loop of my own making. And now, there was nothing left but this crushing guilt, this profound, unyielding sorrow for the broken things I had left in my wake.
Epilogue: The Last Page
With the last vestiges of my strength, I pushed myself up, my body protesting with every strained movement. I looked out at the sunrise, the colors of the newly restored world aching with a beauty I no longer deserved. The air, crisp and clean, tasted like ash and regret. My eyes, once glowing with power, were now dull, clouded with exhaustion and the lingering shadows of madness.
"Dio," I murmured, my voice a mere breath. The Null Apostle, lying where I had dropped it, pulsed faintly, a final, understanding thrum. It was no longer bound to me, no longer an extension of my will, but it remained, a silent witness.
I had rewritten their story, yes, but at what cost? I had broken the Rectores, but at what cost to myself? My victory was a hollow, desolate thing, built on the ashes of my own soul. There was no more power to wield, no more narratives to shape, no more vengeance to exact. Only the profound, aching emptiness.
And then, with a final, shuddering breath, I stepped off the edge of the precipice, falling into the newly colored world, leaving Dio alone amidst the quiet dawn. My body, a mere shell, impacted the earth with a sickening thud, a final period to a life consumed by its own terrible brilliance.
Dio's Letter: For the Future Wielder
(The words appear etched in the air, glowing with an ethereal, timeless light, as if transcribed by a quill of pure energy. Dio's voice is ancient, resonant, filled with the wisdom of eons, yet tinged with a profound sadness for the one it speaks of.)
To the one who finds this, to the spirit destined to grasp what remains of the Quill, know this truth of Kai, the Author.
He was magnificent. A brilliance that defied the cosmos, a will that bent reality. His power was a boundless river, his mind a universe of creation. They called him mad, a monster. But he was only a boy, abandoned and betrayed, who sought to rewrite a world that had broken him.
His transgression was not malice, but hubris. He believed he could transcend the very laws of existence, that his authorship was ultimate. He sought to perfect, to control, to dictate. The Rectores, those ancient beings of order, saw this as a threat to their fundamental design. They could not destroy him, for his essence was too profound. So, they cursed him. They wove a loop into the very fabric of his power, ensuring that every act of "rewriting" by his hand would lead him back to Page One. His genius became his prison. His power, his eternal torment.
He endured countless regressions, cycles of triumph followed by the maddening, subtle return to the beginning. The constant repetition, the false victories, the eternal return of his suffering—it broke him. The hatred grew, not just for his betrayers, but for the cycle itself, for the narrative he was forced to live, over and over.
In his final, glorious battle, he confronted the Architects, the true Rectores. It was there, amidst the clashing of cosmic wills, that the truth shattered him. He saw the loops, the endless returns, the insidious nature of his own curse. His power, the very thing that made him the Author, was the chain.
But even in his madness, he found a final act of defiance. He understood the curse. He transferred it. He poured the looping agony of his authorship, the endless regression, into the Rectores themselves. They, the ones who controlled, became caught in their own creation, their harmony replaced by discord and self-inflicted torment. His final act was not just vengeance, but a desperate, broken attempt to escape, to make them understand his torment.
He smiled, yes, an eerie, terrifying smile of satisfaction. But it quickly crumbled. When the hatred that fueled his retribution faded, the guilt, the crushing weight of every act, every scream, every rewritten life, overwhelmed him. He had become what he fought: a force of chaos and destruction, albeit born of pain. He found no solace in his victory. Only remorse. Only exhaustion.
He apologized to the universe, to the vast, indifferent tapestry he had torn and re-stitched in his rage. And then, he found his ultimate peace. He chose to end his own narrative, to embrace the finality he had so long denied himself.
His journey was a testament to the dangers of unchecked power, of wounds unhealed, of the insidious nature of control, both given and taken. He left you this world, imperfect and raw, but free from his endless loop. And he left you me. The Null Apostle. Dio.
I was his sword, his confidante, his companion through madness and despair. I understood him, perhaps better than he understood himself. Now, I am here for you.
The Quill is yours now. The narrative awaits. Will you repeat the cycle, or will you truly write a new story?
The choice, future wielder, is yours.
— Dio, the Null Apostle
Thank you for reading all the way to the end.
Whether you skimmed through it in one sitting or took breaks to process the chaos — I appreciate you.
"Every story ends. Some just leave burn marks."
[1] No its not the final chapter, i named it the final chapter, because thats what Kai would think.
Go on keep reading
[2] Wanted you to give u guys a break from the story to catch a breathe, i dont think most of u would need it, but whatever ;-)