Inkblood Feud
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Scene 1: The Pact's Echoes
The Pact's words still echoed in Narein's mind as he left the Chamber of Quills:
> "Each word you pen binds you tighter to the world's unraveling."
He gripped the quill in his hand—a black instrument formed from his own glyph-bound blood. It pulsed faintly, reacting to thought more than motion.
Alsvane walked beside him through the descending corridors of the Scriptorium's lower sanctum.
"Now that you hold authorship," she said, "you will find your enemies multiplying. The Redactors are not our only threat."
"What else lurks between the margins?" Narein asked.
She stopped beside a stained-glass door—depicting a bleeding tree whose roots turned into words.
"There's a feud you must understand," she said, her voice low. "One that predates even the Pact. The Inkblood Line."
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Scene 2: The Blood Written in Runes
Inside, torches lit a chamber with walls made of stacked manuscripts. At the center stood an ink basin, wide and deep, from which a slow stream of red-black liquid trickled.
"This," said Alsvane, "is the Inkblood. Not metaphor. Literal. The blood of the first scribes. Those who bound language to flesh."
Narein stepped closer. The fluid shimmered with memory.
He felt them before he saw them.
Two figures approached from opposite ends of the chamber.
One wore robes of crimson vellum, eyes sharp as etched lines. The other, black scroll-threaded armor and skin pale as dry parchment.
"Children of the Inkblood," Alsvane whispered. "Descendants of the first writers who tried to enslave truth."
The crimson one spoke first, voice clipped and rich. "So this is the new Inkborne."
The pale one sneered. "He smells like a half-written prophecy."
Narein's jaw tightened. "And you are?"
"I am Caldor Ves, heir to the Blood-Red Inquisition," said the crimson man.
"And I am Velza Arin, Inkshade of the Silent Grammar."
"Together," said Alsvane, "they represent the eternal feud that split the Inkblood Line. One seeks to burn untruths. The other, to bury them in silence."
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Scene 3: The Challenge
"They've called a rite," Alsvane continued, her voice tense. "A Feud Inkbind. You must survive it."
Narein stepped back. "I just passed a glyph-duel. Now you want me to survive a feud between ancient bloodlines?"
Velza's voice was calm. "Not survive. Participate. You hold the Living Glyph now. That makes you central ink."
Caldor gestured to the ink basin. "Dip your quill. Write one truth of yourself. One lie. If you cannot tell them apart afterward, the feud will decide your fate."
Narein looked to Alsvane. She nodded solemnly.
He stepped forward.
He dipped his quill.
The ink hissed.
He wrote upon the air two sentences:
> "I want to free the erased."
> "I want to become a god."
The air shimmered.
Suddenly, both truths began to merge. The glyphs twisted inward, feeding on one another.
Velza and Caldor extended their hands. Glyphic rings formed around the basin, spinning faster.
"This is the core of the feud," Caldor muttered. "Which truth survives the ink?"
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Scene 4: The Inkbind Fractures
The ritual erupted.
The glyphs exploded into black fire.
Suddenly, Narein was no longer in the chamber. He stood in a battlefield made of parchment hills and rivers of ink.
Velza stood to his left, sword of silence drawn. Caldor to his right, flame-tongued quill in hand.
The battlefield pulsed with memories not his own. Wars of annotation. Slaughters of syntax.
"This is the feud realm," Velza said. "Where ideas fight as flesh."
"You must choose your weapon," Caldor said.
Narein looked to his quill. It shimmered… but split in two.
One quill burned with righteous anger—the desire to rewrite oppression.
The other gleamed with hunger—the ambition to seize the inkthrone.
He gripped both.
The feud began.
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Scene 5: Duel of Ideals
Caldor attacked first, writing gouts of flame into the sky. They fell like divine retribution.
Velza spun webs of silence, catching fire in stillness, freezing intent before it landed.
Narein countered with sentences that bent cause and effect:
> "Before he struck, I had already defended."
> "She had never spoken, and yet I answered."
The battlefield twisted. His glyphs were paradoxes—half-formed prayers with endings that never came.
Caldor shouted. "You want to stand between us?! You are the feud now!"
Velza's voice grew colder. "The more you blur us… the more you become the inkwar itself."
The battlefield collapsed inward.
The quills fused in Narein's hands.
His voice rose. "I am not here to choose a side. I am here to end the sentence!"
A final glyph exploded from him—a period made of memory and rejection.
Everything shattered.
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Scene 6: What Survives
He awoke, coughing, beside the ink basin.
Velza and Caldor stood nearby. Silent. Changed.
Caldor bowed his head. "You fused the feud into yourself. That has not happened since the Fourth Margin War."
Velza narrowed her eyes. "Which truth survived?"
Narein stood slowly.
"Both."
The chamber dimmed.
Alsvane stepped forward. "You've done the unthinkable. You now carry both Inkblood legacies."
From the ink basin, a spiral mark rose and settled over his heart.
Yurel entered, panting. "They've broken the east seal. The Redactors are here!"
Narein turned. His voice was steady.
"Then I'll write their eulogy myself."
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Scene 7: Whisper of the Redactors
Outside the sanctum, dust trembled in the air. Far above, cracks opened across the glyph wards.
Shadows—neither entirely solid nor forgotten—slid between forgotten lines. Figures in script-wrapped robes advanced through the eastern breach. Their faces were masks of old book covers, their hands dripped with liquified ink.
The Redactors had arrived.
Alsvane drew a circle in the air. "We must prepare the Palimpsest Gate. It's our only chance to evacuate the lower scribes."
Yurel nodded. "But Narein can't leave. He's the only one who can bind the breach!"
Narein stared into the ink basin one last time, its surface now a mirror of his fate. Behind him, the ink-lit halls flickered with the memory of stories yet to be written.
"I won't run. Not now. Not ever."
He took his quill, dipped it again into his own blood.
"Let the Redactors come."
And he began to write.
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