Suddenly... my vision trembled, quaked as though the very fabric of my sight was being torn apart... and then it grew dark.
Deafeningly dark.
The thunder of his voice vanished. The roar of creation itself was smothered. All that remained was silence—silence so complete that even the echo of my breath felt stolen away.
My eyes were open... yet there was nothing. Not void, not emptiness—something deeper. A darkness that devoured even the thought of light.
I reached out in my mind for his voice, but it was gone. The Elder Quill, the visions, the spiral of fate—all snuffed out in a single breath.
Until...
[-The Final Draft-]
Volume XV - Apocalypse
-LdrQll
The lair echoed with sickening cracks, each one a grim testament to the agony wracking the beast. Its body twisted in impossible ways, contorting into something far beyond the creature it once was. Heavy, ragged breaths tore from its throat, each one sending ripples across the crimson pool beneath it.
Corpses lay scattered, unfinished, as the beast vomited blood and shattered remains, scattering them anew across the floor.
Bones snapped with grotesque insistence, each crack a violent punctuation to the creature's unrelenting screams. The sound was unbearable, like an animal being tortured from the inside out, filling the lair with a chorus of torment.
From the far distance, a subtle ripple rose on the pool of blood. From beneath the surface, a figure began to emerge. Limbs were missing, torn from the body, but the head and torso remained unmistakably human. Even in pieces, the face, contorted in pain...was him.
Beneath the crimson surface, a fleshlike vein pulsed and writhed, searching. It slithered like a living thread, seeking out the severed limbs, the hands and feet scattered across the lair. One by one, it drew them in, pressing them close to the torso, as though the body itself remembered how it was meant to be whole.
A leg, then an arm, then another. Each movement was jarring and unnatural, the bones snapping and flesh stretching, but slowly, painfully, the figure began to take form. Limbs aligned, hands reattached, muscles knitting together under the writhing, pulsing mass.
The pool of blood shivered, veins crawling outward like roots, but what they were assembling was unmistakable. The shape was human.
When the process finished, he rose. His body was mangled, patches of skin torn or missing, veins visible beneath pale flesh, and the smell of iron thick in the air. But it was him. His eyes opened—wide, aware, human. His gaze, even in this horror, carried the spark of the boy who had once written stories, who had endured all the pain, all the suffering.
And for the first time in what felt like an eternity, he breathed.
He drew a shuddering breath, the stitch-like lines along his body—the grotesque marks where flesh had been connected—faded into nothing. Pain ebbed away, and his body became whole again. Consciousness returned in a rush, sharp and terrifyingly clear.
His hair, drenched in blood, hung over his eyes, partially obscuring his vision. But when he looked around, he didn't just see the lair—he saw everything. Words. Formulas. Lines of fate etched into the very walls, hovering in the air, like the bones of the story itself revealed.
His senses sharpened to a supernatural clarity. Every motion, every sound, every scent registered, yet his heart—somehow—remained unnervingly calm.
"I'm... alive?" he whispered, his voice cracking.
And then his gaze fell upon the beast. Its eyes locked onto his, wild and furious, bones snapping audibly as it let out a horrific scream.
Ivan's body was bare and bloodied. Armor shredded, clothes ripped away, his limbs still raw from the resurrection process.
"Not this again..." he muttered, though there was no fear in his voice—only grim recognition.
The beast lunged, carelessly tearing its own flesh as it moved, its howl a mixture of rage and agony.
For a moment, Ivan froze—then remembered the Elder Quill's words.
With his heightened reflexes, he dodged. But something unexpected happened.
His feet lifted from the blood-slicked ground.
He hovered.
"Woah... I... I'm levitating," he murmured, swaying mid-air as his body struggled to find balance. A few shaky seconds later, he steadied himself, descending slowly toward the blood-soaked ground, his gaze locking on the beast that now sneered at him with feral intent.
You are the inexorable force that even despair cannot chain. Against all of humankind you will stand, not as their prey, nor as their savior, but as their Author.
The words of the Elder Quill echoed through his mind, vibrating like an unyielding command. As his feet touched the surface of the blood pool, he noticed something he had not before: the ink still oozing from the beast's wounds.
But it was no longer ordinary ink. No longer just a mark of the beast's existence. Words now spilled alongside the dark liquid, sentences etched in the air, formulas twisting and warping with the rhythm of the creature's suffering.
A chilling realization struck him.
"You're... a distorted character," he whispered, voice low but firm, the weight of understanding heavy in every syllable.
As he spoke, the beast bled—a dark, ink-like confirmation spilling across the floor. Ivan began to walk forward, deliberate and unhurried. Now, fully aware of what he had become, he moved as the Author—the unstoppable force that even fate itself bent to his will.
The beast shrieked, its body convulsing from corruption. Its scream was deafening, a sound beyond human comprehension, vibrating through the lair like it could shatter eardrums. Yet Ivan moved calmly, each step measured, unshaken by the cacophony.
"Come on... let me take a peek in your story," he said, voice low, taunting.
The beast could no longer contain its rage. With a roar, it lunged—but before it could strike, it collided with an invisible barrier. Thin. Yet unyielding.
Two tentacles struck the barrier in succession, each blow resounding like thunder, yet neither left so much as a scratch. Ivan's calm eyes traced the trembling air around him.
"Poor creature," he muttered, almost pitying it. Observing the futile assault, he thought,
I think... you've landed your hits... hmm.
The beast, stubborn and enraged, struck again and again, pounding against the imperceptible wall.
Ivan's lips curved with quiet amusement. "I shall name this ability of mine," he said, serene, almost arrogant now. The air around him seemed to hum with authority, a reality-shaping presence.
The Fourth Wall... yes... that's it.
For the first time, the lair itself seemed to recognize him—not as prey, not as a participant—but as the Author.
The beast's relentless assault continued, its tentacles striking again and again against the invisible barrier—but the Fourth Wall held firm. Not a scratch, not a dent. Every blow dissipated into nothing.
"I think that's enough hitting," Ivan said, his voice calm, unnervingly so.
He lifted his hand slowly, deliberately, and placed it atop the beast's head. His eyes flared, suddenly alight with something otherworldly. In that instant, visions erupted behind his lids: countless moments from the beast's life, its past and present, every scar and wound—but also a glimpse of something it had never seen: its future. Its true, intended future.
"You... were supposed to die," Ivan murmured, his hand pressing down like the weight of inevitability, "right before the second hunt began."
He tightened his focus, feeling the flow of the story itself under his fingertips. "Behave yourself..."
"fall~."
With a single word, the beast's furious rampage ended.
It slammed into the ground with a sickening, bone-jarring impact. Blood spattered in every direction, forming dark rivulets across the lair. The impact gouged a crater into the stone floor, shaking the very air, yet the beast lay broken, utterly subdued.
Ivan's gaze remained steady, almost clinical, as if observing a character in a story rather than a living, breathing creature. The Author had spoken. The law of the narrative had been enforced.
The beast could not move—as if the very command had been stitched into the fabric of its fate, binding it utterly.
"How... do I rewrite... a corrupted specimen?" Ivan murmured to himself, the words almost lost in the dripping echoes of the lair.
For a moment, he froze, realizing the truth: the Elder Quill had resurrected him without explanation. He hadn't been taught how to rewrite, only that he could. How could he do the work he was meant to do if he didn't know the method?
He began to experiment. Hand after hand, he pressed against the unmoving beast, but all he could see were the visions from moments ago—its past, its present, its intended death. Nothing more.
Frustration bubbled beneath his calm exterior as he paced around the creature, fingers pressed to his chin, mind racing.
Then, his eyes fell on the wound that bled black. The ink, the words that spilled endlessly from the beast's body... they pulsed with possibility.
An idea formed.
The beast muffled a tremulous scream, shivering beneath his gaze.
"Shhh... let the doctor do the work," Ivan said, his voice eerily calm, precise.
The lair seemed to hold its breath, the only sound the dripping of blood and ink, as Ivan prepared to probe the corruption within the beast... to bend its story, piece by piece, under his hand.
Ivan's fingers hovered over the beast's writhing form, tracing the blackened wound with deliberate care. The ink pulsed beneath his touch, wriggling like living threads. Each word, each twisted symbol, was a fragment of its corruption—a story lost to chaos.
He focused, his consciousness threading into the strands of the beast's narrative, feeling the knots of pain, rage, and distortion tangled deep within. Slowly, impossibly, he began to unravel them. With the gentlest pressure, the black ink quivered, recoiling as if recognizing his authority.
The beast trembled violently, limbs jerking, muscles straining—but it could not move. It lay entirely at the mercy of the Author. Twisted bones snapped softly back into place, not with pain, but with the meticulous precision of a sculptor restoring a shattered statue.
"You know... I once dreamed of being a doctor... but I loved writing more," Ivan murmured, almost to himself. Patches of flesh and sinew reknit under his will, and the black ink seeped back into the wounds, reorganizing into clean, coherent lines. The words—the formulas that had dictated its corruption—twisted, then straightened, yielding to his control.
For the final touch, Ivan raised his hands.
"Come forth," he muttered.
From the blood pool, the black liquid rose, spiraling above him, thick with words, twisting sentences, and warped formulas. It condensed into a single, pulsating glob—the spilled narrative of the beast, the last formula of its very existence.
With slow, deliberate control, Ivan commanded the liquid to flow back into the wound, watching as the corruption unwound, obeyed, and finally ceased. The beast's body shivered once... then stilled. Its form, once mangled and chaotic, now hummed with restored coherence—a creature no longer lost to distortion, but bound to the Author's will.
The restoration of the narrative had finished. Ivan slowly stepped back from the beast.
"Be freed," he commanded.
The oppressive weight that had pressed down on the creature lifted. It rose, its form regaining coherence. Its scaleless pink skin glimmered under the dim light of the lair. It no longer resembled a monster born from nightmares, but something biologically plausible—a creature shaped by evolution, hidden from humanity in the depths of the planet, existing since the dawn of man.
This was no distortion. No warped story. It was reality, raw and ancient.
The beast screamed, a sound full of newfound sensation. For the first time, it felt normalcy, the simple awareness of existence untainted by corruption.
And then...
From the beast's core, a crack appeared. Light seeped out, stark and blinding.
"Wh... what's happening?" Ivan whispered, his calm demeanor faltering.
The beast seemed to mourn, a trembling, pitiful motion, yearning for help it could not name. Ivan's hands clenched, powerless.
"Return back!!" he shouted, desperation creeping into his voice.
But the cracking continued. The light spread, and the creature weakened, collapsing with a heavy thud against the blood-soaked floor.
"No... no... no!" Ivan screamed, horror striking deep into him.
He staggered back, staring at the fallen beast. In that instant, the thought clawed at him relentlessly: I have failed. I have failed to rewrite it.
The lair was silent, save for the faint snaps of cracking glass in the air, and the weight of what had just occurred pressed upon him—an echo of inevitability, a reminder that even the Author could stumble.
Or so that's what he thought... before something caught his mind.
"No... no, I did not fail," Ivan whispered, his voice steadier now, though his eyes still trembled with disbelief.
"I did not fail..." he repeated, firmer, as he gazed at the fading beast. Its form dissolved like mist in moonlight, its mournful cries thinning into silence.
"That's the only thing that was meant to happen," he muttered to himself.
The truth pressed upon him: this creature was never meant to draw another breath. In its original fate, it had already been slain—struck down by Elliot and the Captain in the first raid. To force its survival here, in this time, would only unravel the fabric of the story further.
A Scarletskin, especially a mother-type, was not some beast to be allowed freedom. Its very presence was a calamity. If it lived, it would not bring harmony—it would bring terror to the city, devastation to the people.
Ivan's hands lowered, fingers stained faintly with black words and fading light. He exhaled slowly, a hollow breath carrying with it resignation and a shard of understanding.
"It was not a failure..." he murmured. "It was the correction."
The last remnants of the beast's body slipped into nothingness, leaving behind only silence... and the Author's grim acceptance.
Ivan's gaze swept across the carnage, his calculating, omniscient eyes already knowing where to linger. They fixed upon the dull glint of steel half-buried in the mire—the Captain's armor, headless, drenched in drying blood.
"If what I think is true... then should I..." he murmured, steps soft against the wet ground as he approached the corpse. He stood over it, silent, the air heavy with the weight of his hesitation.
"I could resurrect him... but doing so would only stir unrest among the people," he thought, his brow furrowing. A Captain who had already fallen, walking again? It would not be seen as salvation—it would be feared.
His eyes narrowed. "Maybe instead... I should trace the work of the Unknown Being, fix their corruption step by step. If I follow their marks, I can smooth out the distortions." A pause, a breath. "And while doing so, I can rewrite—a new plot... a new ending."
He turned toward the cavern's exit, yet a subtle unrest gnawed at him. It had been with him ever since his own resurrection, and now it pressed harder.
The words. They slithered and swirled endlessly across the world, every surface covered in writhing text only he could see. They wouldn't vanish, no matter how many times he blinked.
"Haahhh... bloody hell," he hissed under his breath, shutting his eyes with irritation. Once. Twice. Thrice. Still there.
Then—he clenched his lids tightly, harder than before.
And to his astonishment, the world remained. Clear. Intact. The words were gone.
His breath caught.
He didn't need his eyes anymore. To see the world clearly, he only had to close them.
Ivan treaded across the blood-flooded ground toward the exit. Just before leaving the lair, he halted.
A hunter's corpse lay slumped atop a mound of debris, spared from being fully submerged. The body looked almost preserved compared to the others, it waselevated above the crimson pool.
Ivan knelt. Without hesitation, he tore a long strip of cloth from the corpse's garments. The sound of ripping fabric echoed harshly in the silence. He wound the black cloth tightly across his eyes, sealing them shut. Better to walk with suppressed ability than endure the slithering words.
But right after when he pulled the cloth, something else shifted.
With the force of the tear, an object slipped loose from the corpse's side and clattered onto the mound before sliding dangerously close to the blood-flood's edge. Ivan's hand shot out to stop it.
Its handle was etched faintly with gold. Minimal in design—no ornamentation beyond what necessity allowed—yet its surface gleamed as though rarely touched. Polished. Cared for.
A revolver.
Ivan paused, the blindfold half-tied, his unseen gaze lingering on the weapon. At last, he knotted the cloth firmly, binding darkness over his eyes, and reached down.
The revolver was heavy in his grip. Not unbearably so, but enough that his wrist acknowledged the weight. He flicked it to the side, opening the cylinder.
Only one bullet.
His expression hardened beneath the blindfold. That meant it had been fired already—desperately.
And judging by the way its owner now lay dead, perhaps they hadn't had the chance to draw the final shot.
"Mind if I take her from you?"
His unseen gaze lingered on the corpse, the faint curve of a smirk tugging at his lips. The revolver's elongated barrel rested lazily on his shoulder as he turned away, continuing toward the exit.
"Thanks," he added almost playfully.
As he walked, he flicked his wrist. The cylinder snapped open—only one bullet sat waiting in its chamber. With another smooth motion, he flicked it back and spun it shut, then gave a sharp flick of his finger against the barrel.
Clink.
The metallic sound echoed through the lair, reverberating off blood-slick walls like a chime in a tomb. He opened the cylinder again.
Fully loaded.
"There..." his smirk widened, voice dipping with an arrogant lilt, "darling, you're well fed now."
The revolver clicked shut once more as he approached the mouth of the lair.
Or what should have been the mouth.
The way out had been sealed—a barricade of collapsed stone, twisted rebars jutting like rusted spears. The hunters' desperation was carved into every jammed beam and crammed slab. Their fear was still etched here, in how tightly they had sealed what had lurked within.
"Look how tight it's been crumped," Ivan muttered, a low chuckle spilling from his lips.
"Fear does make people desperate."
He stepped closer to the barricade. His form began to haze, his edges softening, body becoming less flesh and more vapor—like the Fourth Wall itself was bending, letting him slip through.
And so he did.
He passed through with ease, the world on the other side bleeding into his unseen gaze. Even blindfolded, he could still see. The cloudy sky spread above the ruined husk of Canary Wharf.
London's face was broken beyond recognition. Once glass and steel, now smothered under soot, ash, and the bones of collapsed towers.
Modernity had been strangled out of existence, replaced with the clattering lungs of survival—steam pipes groaning, gearworks grinding, machines coughing smoke into the gray air.