Kael stared at the sky.
The stars no longer shimmered passively. They blinked—synchronously, suspiciously—as if mimicking his breath. Some formed into rough silhouettes of his posture, his face, even his defiant glare.
It wasn't flattery.
It was infestation.
"I think I've infected the narrative," he muttered.
Lyra stepped beside him, arms wrapped tightly across her chest, draped in a cloak of condensed dusk. Her brow furrowed as she followed his gaze.
"You didn't infect it," she said. "You gave it permission."
Kael turned toward her. "Permission for what?"
"To imitate you. To rewrite like you. To believe it can."
Kael clenched his fists. The air around him shimmered slightly in response.
The Starfall Tome pulsed red beside him.
[ PHENOMENON DETECTED: MULTIPLE REWRITE SIGNALS ]
[ Echoes: 43,111 active Kael-pattern signatures in 19 localities ]
[ RISK: PRIMARY AUTHORSHIP DILUTION IMMINENT ]
"Great," Kael said under his breath. "Now I'm plagiarizing myself."
Lyra didn't smile. "This is bigger than you. This is the system mimicking belief itself."
Kael closed his eyes and inhaled. The air felt heavier, almost like it wanted to narrate him without his consent.
"I didn't fight gods to get ghostwritten by a crowd."
Suddenly the ground warped.
A jagged ripple ran across the horizon like a glitch in reality's skin. Kael stepped forward, instincts snapping into place.
A figure emerged from the fracture.
Another Kael.
But this one wore robes of symbols, like each thought had wrapped itself around him. His eyes didn't glow—they recorded. Watched.
"I knew you'd mess this up," the copy said. "You wrote chaos into a system that needed symmetry."
"Spare me the lecture," Kael replied. "You're just another bug in a world built to break."
"I'm the fix."
"You're a fucking fraud."
Kael charged.
The echo raised his hand, and the world beneath Kael twisted, flipping gravity sideways. Kael crashed into a wall of air that hardened like steel, but he didn't stop.
The Tome rotated beside him like a battle partner, glowing with escalating power.
Lyra extended a hand from behind and whispered his name.
His center stabilized. Momentum returned.
Kael wrote a command in the air:
"This imposter fades when truth burns."
The echo recoiled, flickering, but didn't vanish.
Instead, he growled: "You're not truth. You're popular fiction."
Kael lunged again.
Their fight wasn't physical. It was linguistic war.
Every blow was a contradiction.
Every block, a metaphor.
Every dodge, a rephrasing.
The sky rewrote itself around them, paragraphs burning midair.
Lyra remained at the edge of the battle, her hand pressed to her heart, her body pulsing with emotional resonance.
She didn't interfere—but her presence gave Kael gravity.
He wasn't fighting alone.
The clone faltered. Kael's energy swelled.
He reached for the Tome.
And wrote the line that ended it:
"Only the flawed version bleeds enough to matter."
The echo screamed as his body unraveled into footnotes and vanished.
Kael fell to his knees, panting.
Lyra was already there, kneeling with him, steadying his breath with her touch.
"You still believe you're the only one who can do this?" she asked softly.
Kael shook his head.
"I'm not the only one. I'm just the one who refuses to stop."
They embraced—tired, grounded, whole.
Then the Tome buzzed again.
Not red.
Black.
A new page turned on its own.
[ PAGE VIII: SEALED BY FOREIGN AUTHOR ]
[ Writer Identity: UNKNOWN ]
[ Conflict Level: CRITICAL – Timeline Overwrite Detected ]
Kael stood slowly.
"They got ahead of me," he whispered.
Lyra's voice was low.
"Then it's not just a story anymore. It's a race for reality."