The forest broke apart like torn paper behind them. Branches curled in mourning as Aurora and Lysander walked onward, side by side — one carrying the last shard of the curse, the other a body held together by fading dreamstuff and old promises.
They followed the path laid in silence, a trail of silver ink that shimmered beneath their feet only when they didn't look directly at it.
"Where are we going?" Aurora finally asked.
Lysander's answer was quiet.
"To the Mirror Quill."
Aurora frowned. "That's a legend."
"So are we," he replied.
The road took them to the forgotten part of the world, where even dreams dared not tread — a place unmarked by time or maps. The land sloped downward into a valley of marble ruins and ink-drowned rivers. Here, the sky was parchment-colored, streaked with ancient writing that shifted when you blinked — tales being rewritten with every step they took.
At the heart of the valley stood a single tower.
Not made of stone.
But of paper.
Layer upon layer of story pages — burned, bloodstained, folded, and re-written — stacked into a spire that reached into the low-hanging clouds. The wind did not howl here. It whispered.
Every whisper was a sentence.
Every gust, a chapter.
And at the top of the tower, Aurora knew, waited the one who wrote it all.
The Author.
She and Lysander entered the tower without speaking. The door was a torn-out book cover, swinging on rusted hinges. The steps inside were blank pages that filled with words the moment her feet touched them.
Aurora.
Lysander.
Together.
Climbing.
Higher.
"This place feels alive," Aurora murmured.
"It is," said Lysander. "It's where the stories live… and where they end."
As they climbed, the tower revealed fragments of other tales — rooms filled with cursed shoes, poisoned apples, thorned spindles, broken mirrors, and silver threads cut too soon.
And names. So many names.
Carved into the walls, bleeding ink:
Cinderella. Red. Belle. Elara. Aurora.
All rewritten.
All rewritten by the same hand.
At the final landing, they found a door of black parchment sealed with wax. A quill floated before it — long as a sword, its nib dripping ink that hissed as it hit the floor.
"Only the cursed can enter," Lysander whispered.
Aurora raised the shard he'd given her — the true heart of her curse — and pressed it into the wax. It shattered.
The door sighed open.
Inside sat a man cloaked in unfinished sentences. His face was not his own. Every time she blinked, he wore a new one — the face of her father, the prince, the witch, even her own reflection.
He wrote with a quill that bled.
He turned to her, not surprised.
"So. The sleeping one stirs."
"Are you the Author?" Aurora asked.
"I am what's left when stories end. I am the hand behind the curtain, the voice in the mirror, the curse in the ink." He smiled. "And I know why you've come."
She stepped forward, bold.
"Then you know I'm here to end this."
The Author gestured at the open book before him.
"This is your story. Your lines are nearly spent. But go ahead, Threadbreaker. Write your ending."
A second quill rose from the floor — simple, cracked, and silver. It hovered before her, trembling.
Aurora hesitated.
"What happens if I write my own ending?"
"Then you choose who dies," the Author said.
"And if I don't?"
"Then I do."
Lysander stood behind her — silent, still. Ink bled from his fingertips.
"You already know, don't you?" Aurora asked him. "That one of us won't leave."
He nodded.
"I was only ever written to save you. Not to survive you."
She turned to the book. Her hands shook. The pages were blank.
No one had written the ending yet.
"What if I don't want either of us to die?"
The Author tilted his head. "Then write something new. But understand — ink is memory. And memories cannot be undone."
Aurora lifted the silver quill.
And wrote:
She was never asleep. She was waiting. Not for a prince. Not for an ending. But for the truth. For the moment she stopped being someone's story… and became her own.
The tower shook.
Ink bled up the walls.
The Author screamed as his faces split and collapsed — words unraveling from his skin like smoke.
The book burned with light.
Lysander collapsed.
"No!" Aurora screamed, running to him.
He smiled weakly, fading.
"You rewrote the curse… but I was part of it. Thank you… for waking me."
His body dissolved into ink and starlight.
Aurora wept — not for the end, but for the beginning she'd finally written.
That day, the Mirror Tower vanished.
The stories etched into the sky faded.
And Aurora walked away — not a sleeping beauty, but a living girl.
With ink-stained fingers and a name that no one could rewrite.