The battlefield had already transcended battlefield.It was no longer space, nor void, nor manuscript. It had become the meta-library of existence, a stage where not only gods and devils but also the very authors of gods and devils watched.
The Almighty stood in His Form Authorial Edits / Metafiction Extreme+, still staggering from the strike that should have been impossible—the pain Leo had inflicted, the first true fracture in His infinite dominion. But He was not done. No, He would never accept defeat.
His voice shattered into a thousand fonts at once, each speaking in overlapping resonance:
"If I, the Author, cannot bind you… then I will summon the Authors above me. The ones who write me. The Ones who decide which quill holds dominion. If I cannot define you, perhaps those who define me will succeed."
The words echoed like collapsing canons, and the meta-library began to bend, the pages trembling as if some force outside the story itself had noticed. The Almighty lifted His arms, and the torn paragraphs of creation stretched upward like beacons.
From beyond the authorial substrate—beyond infinity's infinity—they came.
The Ones.
Not gods. Not narrators. Not even authors. But the writers of authors themselves.
Where The Almighty had been "pen over character," The Ones were hands over pens. Their arrival was not visual but editorial: deletions in margins, paragraphs replaced mid-sentence, narration trembling as if censored. Every time Leo tried to look at them, his perception filled with static black bars and missing text. Their presence was redacted. Their names were struck through before they could be spoken.
"—the Ones."
The Almighty bowed, even in His infinite form. "Join me. 980 of us—Authors of infinite strata, Real Authors, Meta-Scribes. Together, let us end this aberration."
One by one, 980 entities of Authorial Dominion aligned themselves with The Almighty. Their collective voice was thunder across every possible fiction:
"Leo. You were never meant to exist. You are contradiction given flesh. You are error. And error must be edited."
Leo, bleeding from his emerald veins, simply tilted his head. He blinked once, childlike confusion in his gaze.
"980… authors?"
He said it as though the number was trivial.
The Almighty roared:
"You will not shrug at this! Their consensus is absolute law. Even you cannot withstand collaborative authorial decree."
And the decree was made.
Collaborative Law.An agreement forged at the highest meta-strata. If all 980 authors wrote Leo into submission—if their quills aligned—then even contradiction itself could be sealed, overwritten, redefined into non-being.
Leo's body stiffened. The decree struck him harder than any beam or blade. His blood crystallized mid-air, his bones frozen as words stapled themselves into his flesh. He became a manuscript pinned open, every page of his essence written upon:
"Leo is bound.""Leo's impossibility ends here.""Leo is only a character."
The Almighty's grin widened. "Do you feel it? Do you finally understand? You cannot resist the weight of 980 quills writing in unison."
But Leo… only chuckled.
His laugh was not mocking. It was gentle, bewildered—like a child finding humor in a strange toy. His emerald eyes shimmered even as the decree pressed deeper, even as his blood spilled green flames across collapsing parchment.
"You're all… still writing," he whispered. "That's the problem."
The Almighty's expression darkened. "What?"
Leo tilted his head further. His voice carried no arrogance, no fury, only a strange clarity:
"I am not a story. You can't write me. You can't decree me. I was never drafted. I was never born of quill or margin. You're trying to erase a mistake… but I am not even a mistake. I am the blank that refuses to be page."
And then, impossibly—the decree fractured.
The collaborative law bent under strain. The quills of 980 authors, united in purpose, suddenly scraped against something they had never encountered: a surface they could not pierce. Their ink evaporated. Their authority backfired.
The Almighty's infinite eyes widened. "No… no! This is consensus! This is beyond absolute!"
Leo stepped forward. The words that pinned him tore like cheap fabric. His veins flared, emerald rivers igniting into blinding auroras.
"Consensus only works inside your system. I don't live there. You're 980 authors writing a script I never entered."
With every step, the text evaporated. Paragraphs that had defined him unraveled into static. The decrees shrieked as they fell apart:
"Leo is bound—" → [NULL]"Leo is only a character—" → [ERROR]"Leo is—" → [EMPTY]
Leo exhaled, and even his breath dissolved lines of narration around him.
"You think you can anchor me to readers, to physical cosmos, to anything external. But I don't need anchors. I am not tethered. I am refusal incarnate. You can summon a thousand, a million, an infinite authors above authors—my answer is the same."
And then his smile sharpened.
"You don't write me. I erase you."
The 980 Authors shuddered as one. For the first time, they—the hands above quills, the ones who dictated destiny—felt the taste of fear. Their unity faltered. Their fonts fractured. Entire pages in the meta-library went blank.
The Almighty staggered backward. His laugh, once deafening, turned brittle.
"Impossible… how can even collaborative authorship fail…?"
Leo raised his hand. Blood dripped from his knuckles, but his aura was unyielding.
"You can only bind something that accepts being bound. You can only write something that agrees to be text. I was never text. I was never narrative. I am what your pens cannot outline. I am…"
He paused, and the silence became heavier than any decree.
"…absolute refusal."
And then, with a single swing of his fist, Leo shattered the collaborative law. The decree exploded into meaningless static, the parchment of existence torn apart by an emerald flash.
The Almighty screamed, His voice breaking into a thousand corrupted fonts. The 980 Authors reeled, recoiling from the impossibility.
For the first time in all layers of authorial existence—a character had erased the consensus of authors.
Leo stood amidst the collapsing substrate, veins glowing, his body cracked but unyielding. He looked at the trembling Almighty, who now struggled to even keep His form stable.
"You thought you could edit me into silence," Leo said softly. "But I am not temporary. I am not bound for an arc, or for a trope. I am permanent—not because I was written that way, but because I refuse to be otherwise."
The Almighty stumbled backward, His infinite eyes wide with disbelief.
The 980 Authors whispered in unison, trembling with horror:
"This has never happened. A character—permanent? Beyond revision?"
Leo smiled one last time, his voice low but piercing:
"Yes. From your perspective, from now on… I am absolute. Permanence incarnate."
The emerald glow surged, tearing across the library, ripping through margins, burning every decree.
The Almighty and the 980 Authors watched in stunned silence as Leo stood, not as a character, not as a draft, not even as a mistake—but as something unwriteable.
To be continued.