Chapter 23 - The Mirror of Edits

The Codex trembled beneath Mary's fingertips.

Words crawled across the blank page like ants made of ink, each letter a hesitant breath. In the stillness of the infinite library—her library—the air buzzed with voices that had never been born, fates cut short, epilogues unwritten. Her breath caught, not out of fear, but something worse: recognition.

They were all hers.

Loosie paced nearby, sword still sheathed but fingers twitching. "This place feels wrong," she said. "Like if I blink too long, I'll forget what I'm supposed to be."

"You might," the man from the ridge replied. "This isn't a place. It's a possibility—an unfinished thought given mass."

Lela knelt beside a shelf labeled Sisterhood of the Tern Blade. She drew her fingers over the spines. "None of these were real?"

"They were almost real," the Friend whispered, resting one hand against a book titled The Pale God's Mercy. "Which makes them dangerous."

Mary stood, eyes still locked on the desk in front of her. The Codex's latest page had titled itself:

"To Know the Writer, One Must Face the Editor"

As the ink dried, the page cracked in the center—splintering like glass.

And through the break, a portal opened.

Not of magic. Not even of story. It was something else—something surgical. A cut between drafts.

"Time to meet her," Mary said softly.

Loosie's brow furrowed. "Meet who?"

Mary looked over her shoulder. "The version of me that never stopped editing."

Without another word, she stepped through the page.

The moment she crossed the threshold, the light shifted.

Everything turned gray, like parchment soaked in fog. She stood on a narrow bridge suspended over an endless void of shredded manuscript paper, torn outlines drifting like clouds. The sky above was made of red-ink comments that twisted themselves into sentences like:

"Is this necessary?"

"Too much emotion—tighten."

"Kill your darlings."

A figure stood at the other end of the bridge.

She looked like Mary—but her coat was immaculate, her hair tied back, and in her hand was a pen that gleamed like a dagger. Her eyes, however, were ancient. Exhausted. As if they'd seen the same paragraph rewritten a thousand times and still found it lacking.

"Finally," she said, her voice clipped and sharp. "You decided to stop pretending."

Mary stepped forward. "Who are you?"

The other Mary laughed—cold, bitter. "I'm the you who stayed behind. The you who kept fixing, cutting, reworking, polishing until perfection killed the truth."

She gestured to the shredded manuscripts floating below them. "These? These were almost good. But almost isn't good enough, is it?"

Mary clenched her fists. "I had to move on. I had to let go."

"No," the other Mary hissed, stepping closer. "You abandoned them. You compromised. You let plot holes slide. You gave side characters mercy they didn't earn. You weakened the Codex."

Mary's chest tightened. "I made choices. And I lived with them."

The Editor—her other self—held up her dagger-pen. "And I rewrote them."

She slashed the air.

Suddenly, the bridge between them rewrote itself into a battlefield.

A dozen enemies appeared around Mary: twisted versions of past foes, each one carrying the name of an editing sin. There was Pacing, a lurching beast that staggered from scene to scene; Overwrought, a creature of ten tongues and no voice; and Infodump, a golem of heavy textboxes whose limbs fell off with every swing.

"This is absurd," Mary whispered.

"No," the Editor said. "This is what you left undone."

They charged.

Mary drew her blade—her real blade, not one conjured from prose—and moved. The first strike took down Pacing, but not before it clipped her leg, making her stumble into Overwrought's grasp. Its tongues wrapped around her throat, each one whispering, "More! More detail! Clarify the subtext!"

Mary gagged, then jabbed her blade upward, slicing the tongues free.

The battlefield shifted with every step. The Editor wasn't just fighting her. She was rewriting the fight itself.

"You think story is about feeling," the Editor spat. "But feelings are sloppy. Plot is a science."

Mary blocked Infodump's fist, which shattered into a thousand words that tried to embed themselves into her skin.

"And you think control makes things true?" Mary shouted.

"Yes!" the Editor roared. "Control is clarity. Control is truth. Without editing, story is noise."

Mary turned, furious, and met the Editor blade to blade.

Steel clashed against ink.

The Codex hummed in her satchel. It wanted to speak—but this was a duel no page could resolve.

"People aren't perfect!" Mary screamed, deflecting another blow. "Neither are stories!"

"Then why do you keep trying to fix them?"

"Because I believe they can still matter!"

The Editor slashed, and Mary felt a page rip inside her chest—an old memory, rewritten on the spot. Her first love, now cold. Her first victory, now pyrrhic.

"You left so many endings unwritten," the Editor growled.

"I left them open," Mary said, voice shaking. "So others could write them with me."

The Editor faltered.

Mary surged forward, struck her pen-hand, and tore it free.

"You were never meant to finish anything," Mary said. "You were meant to help. But you took over."

The Editor staggered back. "Then what am I now?"

"A scar," Mary said. "One I choose to keep."

She stepped forward, hand out.

The Editor looked at it for a long time.

Then vanished into smoke.

Mary gasped as she stumbled back into the infinite library. Loosie caught her.

"What happened?"

"I forgave myself," Mary whispered. "Or… some part of myself."

The Codex pulsed.