"The worst monsters are those who believe they're just proofreading."
Scene: Akasora – Collapsing Reality
The sky rains ink.
Buildings fold into paragraphs. Trees become lines of unfinished haiku.
The Editor-in-Bleed descends, floating above the shattered city like a god of redacted memories.
"This narrative has deviated. Prepare for erasure."
His fingers—quills.
His eyes—citation marks.
His presence alone causes Hiragi's memories to rewind, scramble, overwrite.
"Don't let him narrate you," Ishigami warned, barely keeping his thoughts linear.
Pageburner Resists
The boy screams, holding the Void Quill tighter.
"You promised I could end it! You told me the pain would go away!"
"I lied," the Editor-in-Bleed replies coldly. "You were never the author. Just a pen."
And with that—he snaps his fingers.
The Void Quill in Pageburner's hand disintegrates.
Void Unleashed
Hiragi steps forward, Void seeping from his veins.
"You don't get to write the ending."
"Your powers are derived from me," the Editor sneers.
"Then let me show you what your failure looks like."
Hiragi activates The Black Rewrite—a forbidden Void technique Nolan warned him never to use.
Reality bends. The Editor's control cracks.
Final Duel: Concept vs Void
They clash in a plane made of pure story structure.
The Editor attacks with canon law and plot logic. Hiragi counters with narrative disobedience and character willpower. Ishigami seals corrupted sentences. Airi disrupts continuity fields.
For every rewrite the Editor attempts, Hiragi responds with:
"This story belongs to me."
The Final Rewrite
Bleeding from his ears, Hiragi screams one last sentence:
"This chapter ends with your name forgotten."
And it works.
The Editor stumbles. His name—his title—his face—
erased.
He collapses into scattered footnotes.
Silence.
Aftermath
Akasora stabilizes, though cracked and haunted.
Pageburner, now just a boy, kneels in the ruins.
"What now?" he asks.
Hiragi: "You start over. Without the pen."
Ishigami: "We all do."
Airi smiles faintly. "Let's go home."
End of Arc 2: The City That Dreams in Blood