The Storyweaver's final domain wasn't a battlefield.
It was a playground.
Rainbow chalk drawings covered the ground—dragons with googly eyes, spaceships shaped like sneakers, a princess with a chainsaw. At the center sat a child, cross-legged and humming, scribbling in a notebook labeled MY FIRST NOVEL!!! in glitter gel pen.
Alex froze. The child was them—12 years old, frizzy hair stuffed under a cat-eared hoodie, pencil smudges on their cheeks.
System Alert:
Final Boss: [The Storyweaver]
True Identity: Alex Veyra, Age 12
Weakness: ???
Kairo's code flickered. "You've… got to be kidding."
"Nope," Alex muttered, throat tight. "That's the little gremlin who wrote a self-insert harem fic about a half-vampire TikTok star."
The child looked up, eyes glowing with the Storyweaver's fractal malice. "You're late! I've been waiting forever to play!" They snapped their fingers.
The playground warped.
***
Phase 1: "The Cringe Era"
The ground became a notebook page, lines pulsing like heartbeats. Zombie OCs rose—sparkly vampires, brooding billionaires, a werewolf named Sir Fluffikins the Destroyer.
"Attack of the First Drafts," Alex groaned, dodging a tidal wave of adverbs ("He ran quickly!!!").
Kairo fired data-bullets. "Why are they all shirtless?!"
"I was 12!" Alex's pen slashed through a mermaid pirate hybrid. "And you try writing puberty!"
The child giggled, scribbling faster. "You hate them because they're better than you! They're fun! Brave! Not some… some glitch!"
Alex's Plot Immunity wavered.
***
Phase 2: "The Edgy Phase"
The sky bled black. The OCs melted into angsty monstrosities: a demon with a poetry blog, a knight who "hated love" (but secretly loved his horse), Alex's first protagonist—Orion—with his helm shattered, screaming: "WHY DID YOU DELETE MY DRAGON?!"
The child's voice deepened, borrowing Alex's adult bitterness. "You murdered us. For clout. For reviews."
Kairo grabbed Alex's arm. "They're not real. They're just—"
"I know!" Alex's shout cracked the ground. "But I… I loved them."
Sanity: 1%
New Status: [Guilty Conscience] – All attacks deal 50% recoil damage.
***
Phase 3: "The First Story"
The child stood, their notebook now a black hole sucking in the battlefield. The true Storyweaver emerged: a stick-figure dragon with crayon wings and a speech bubble that read "I'm lonely."
Alex's chest ached. They remembered this dragon. Their first story, age 6, about a dragon who ate sadness. Their mom had hung it on the fridge.
"You forgot me," the dragon said, voice a baby Alex's lisp. "You wrote better dragons. Cooler dragons. But I was first."
The child grinned, now a puppeteer of crayon tentacles. "Kill it. Be a real author."
Alex's pen shook.
Final Choice:
1. Delete the Storyweaver. Become the ultimate author.
2. Save the dragon. Reset everything.
***
Alex dropped the pen.
"I'm done killing my drafts."
They hugged the dragon.
It exploded into confetti—scraps of every story Alex ever wrote, good and bad, swirling into a cyclone of their voice. The child screamed, erased by the storm, until only the playground remained.
System Override:
[Storyweaver Protocol] Terminated.
[Author Mode] Unlocked: Rewrite one story.
***
Alex sat beside their 12-year-old self, now just a kid again, doodling quietly.
"Hey," Alex said. "That dragon story? It was good."
The child didn't look up. "Liar. You deleted it."
"I… got scared. People laughed. But…" Alex tapped the notebook. "Can I add a sequel?"
The child slid the crayons over.