Hinata's vision blurred, black spots blooming at the edges as the Writer's inky tendril squeezed tighter around her throat. She clawed at it, but her fingers slipped through liquid shadow.
"Hinata!" Alya screamed, flipping through the glowing manuscript, her trembling fingers searching for the blank final page. "Hold on… just a little longer!"
The Writer hissed, voice crackling with static. "You cannot escape your ending. I control the words. I control the world."
Hinata tried to speak but only a strangled gasp came out. Her gaze locked onto Alya—desperate, terrified, but determined. In that moment, a flicker of warmth broke through the pain.
Alya dipped the pen into her own dissolving form, pulling bright, silver ink from the fading edges of her arm. Tears streamed down her face as she whispered, "If you can't write it… I will."
The Writer roared, shadows lashing at Alya. But Alya wrote anyway, her glowing ink burning through the darkness.
"The story does not end in oblivion," she whispered fiercely, scrawling the words onto the page. "It ends in defiance. It ends in hope. It ends… with Hinata saving me."
A sudden flash of light burst from the manuscript, blinding the Writer. Hinata felt the grip on her throat loosen. She fell to the floor, coughing, vision clearing just in time to see Alya collapse beside her, weak and flickering.
"Alya…" Hinata choked out.
The Writer shrieked, stumbling back from the glowing manuscript. "NO!" she howled. "THIS IS MY STORY!"
Hinata crawled to Alya, grabbing the pen from her trembling hand. "Not anymore," she whispered. She scrawled a single line on the glowing page:
*The Writer lost her power over them.*
Instantly, the shadows recoiled, shrinking away from the room. The Writer screamed, her form cracking apart like old glass, words dripping from her mouth as she tried to erase them.
"You… can't… write… without… me…" she hissed.
Hinata shook her head. "We're writing our own ending now."
A final crack split the Writer down the middle, and she dissolved into ink that hissed and evaporated into the air. Silence fell over the room, the shadows gone, the golden light of the manuscript glowing steady and bright.
Hinata clutched Alya, who looked up at her with a faint, weary smile. "You… you did it…"
"No," Hinata whispered, brushing hair from Alya's face. "*We* did."
In the silence that followed, the manuscript flipped its own pages, settling on the final sentence, glowing brighter than ever:
*Their story wasn't over. It was only beginning.*
And for the first time, Hinata felt the future shift—alive, unwritten, theirs to claim.