Clara's scream echoed into the void, but it wasn't human anymore.
The ink pouring from her body writhed like serpents, crawling over her skin, coiling around her arms, face, and throat. Each line etched itself into scripture, alive and burning, words in a thousand languages writing themselves into her flesh.
The ground beneath her turned into parchment. Her shadow wasn't hers anymore—it stretched upward, forming a towering silhouette of ink and script, a faceless thing with too many arms clutching quills that bled black fire.
Her voice came through fractured syllables:
"I… am… the scripture."
Damien stumbled back, his flames dimming despite the raging inferno around him. "Clara… what the hell—what's happening to you?!"
Her eyes—if they could still be called that—were now pools of black text, words constantly rewriting themselves across her pupils. She reached toward him, and her voice cracked with desperate humanity beneath the monstrous layers.
"Damien… help me… I don't want… to be just his…"
But her hand trembled, shaking violently as ink dripped and formed chains around her wrist—chains that pulled her back toward Yurin.
Yurin watched the transformation as though it were a familiar ritual. His expression wasn't cruel, nor gleeful—just inevitable.
"You were never meant to be, Clara. You were always meant to write."
The words cut deeper than any blade. Damien's fury reignited, flames searing the air. "You're turning her into a monster!"
Yurin met his rage with serenity.
"No. I'm simply revealing what she always was."
Evelyn bowed, serpents weaving into a crown above her shadowed head. Her voices overlapped in reverence.
"The Pen awakens. The Architect's scripture breathes. At last, the ink remembers its master."
Her devotion was chilling, her many mouths whispering words Clara couldn't bear to hear.
Clara shrieked, her body writhing, quills stabbing outward from her spine as though her very soul was breaking into instruments of writing. Every scream came out as letters, floating in the air before burning into ash.
Damien dropped to one knee, his heart ripping apart as he watched her dissolve into something unrecognizable. His flames wavered, confused—burn the chains? Burn the ink? Burn Yurin?
He reached for her desperately. "Clara, listen to me! You're not his pen, you're YOU! You're the one who stayed up at night writing nonsense notes just to annoy me, the one who told me fire was too dramatic when I lit your books for warmth—"
Her voice, broken and distant, cut him like glass.
"Then… write me back, Damien. Write me back into myself…"
And then the ink swallowed her whole.
Where Clara once stood now towered a grotesque figure:
A woman-shaped being of parchment and ink, her arms sprouting endless quills that dripped rivers of text. Her face was blank save for constantly rewriting verses. Every step she took left scripture burning into the ground.
The void itself reacted, words from the sky's fracture descending into her, feeding her form.
Damien's eyes widened in disbelief. "Clara…"
Yurin's calm voice cut through the chaos.
"Not Clara. She is the Codex. My eternal scripture, the living archive of every truth I have written."
The Codex turned her head toward Damien, her faceless mouth opening. A scream erupted—
but this scream wasn't sound.
It was language.
Thousands of words, layered in every tongue known and unknown, blasted outward like a storm of blades. Damien barely shielded himself with fire, his arms shredded by letters carving into his skin.
Damien fell to one knee, blood soaking his charred armor, as words carved themselves into his flesh: Oath. Servant. Slave.
The Codex loomed above him, her hand trembling as if she still wanted to resist—but the chains of ink pulled her forward.
Yurin stepped closer, crimson aura radiating like a heartbeat.
"Tell me, Damien. Will you fight her to save her…
or kill her to end her?"
The Codex raised her quill-bladed arm, aimed at Damien's heart.
Damien's flames flared—hesitant, trembling—
as the choice threatened to destroy him.
[Chapter Twelve — End]