Book 9: The Fabric of reality

---

Chapter 1: A World That Shouldn’t Exist

Page blinked.

The sky above her was wrong.

Colors bled into each other like paint spilled across an infinite canvas. The ground beneath her feet wasn’t solid—it shifted with every step, as if reality itself was questioning its own existence.

She turned slowly, taking in the impossible landscape. Where am I?

One moment, she had been standing with Jalen, still injured from their last fight, still shaken by the power he had awakened. The next—she had been pulled into this place.

“This is your trial.”

A voice. Soft, yet absolute.

Page turned, her breath catching in her throat.

Before her stood a figure wrapped in endless folds of fabric, their face hidden beneath layers of shifting cloth that never settled in place.

“The Fabricator,” the voice murmured, as if responding to her thoughts. “I exist between what is real and what is not.”

Page’s pulse quickened. She had spent her entire life bending reality to her will—but this place… this thing… was beyond her comprehension.

The Fabricator took a slow step forward, and the world around them rippled. “You wield the power of reality itself, yet you do not understand it.”

Page clenched her fists. “Then teach me.”

The Fabricator’s head tilted. And then, without warning—

The world shattered.

---

Chapter 2: The First Death

Page gasped as she hit the ground. No—she felt herself hit the ground, but there was nothing beneath her.

Her breath came in ragged bursts. Her body felt intact, but something was wrong.

She looked down.

Her hands—her body—were fading.

Panic surged through her. “What—”

“You have always bent reality,” the Fabricator’s voice came from everywhere, yet nowhere. “But have you ever questioned what that means?”

Page tried to move, but the world shifted with her. She took a step, and suddenly she was standing on the other side of the landscape. Another step—she was falling into the sky.

Her own power was betraying her.

The Fabricator’s voice remained calm. “Your ability does not make you invincible. It makes you fragile.”

Page gritted her teeth. “I control reality.”

“You manipulate it,” the Fabricator corrected. “But what happens when reality itself refuses to be bent?”

And then, the realization struck.

Her body wasn’t fading.

She was being rejected by existence itself.

Page barely had time to scream before she ceased to be.

---

Chapter 3: The Place Between Realities

Page woke up.

But she didn’t wake up anywhere.

She existed in nothingness.

No sound. No light. No thoughts.

She didn’t breathe. She didn’t move. She wasn’t even sure she still had a body.

This is death.

A truth settled into her mind, cold and absolute. She hadn’t just been defeated. She hadn’t just lost.

She had been erased.

And yet… she was still aware.

Something flickered in the void. A thread—a single strand of existence.

Page reached for it.

The moment her fingers brushed against it—

Reality exploded.

---

Chapter 4: The Weaver’s Truth

Page gasped as she collapsed onto a solid surface.

She was back.

But she wasn’t the same.

Her hands trembled, not with fear, but with understanding.

She hadn’t just returned. She had rewritten herself back into existence.

The Fabricator stood before her, unreadable. “Now, you see.”

Page’s breathing was steady. “I was never truly controlling reality.”

The Fabricator nodded. “You were simply bending its rules. But reality is not a set of unbreakable laws.”

Page’s fingers curled into a fist. She could feel the threads of existence now, woven together in intricate, delicate patterns.

“What if,” she whispered, “I don’t just bend it?”

A flick of her wrist—

And the sky tore open.

Not an illusion. Not a trick.

She had cut into the fabric of reality itself.

The Fabricator’s voice was quiet. “Now you understand. And now—”

The world around her shifted, reshaping into something entirely new.

“Your true training begins.”

---

Chapter 5: The First Rewrite

The lessons that followed were brutal.

Page no longer practiced simple manipulation. She wasn’t warping surfaces or distorting structures. She was unmaking them and weaving them back together from scratch.

Every time she altered reality, the Fabricator pushed her further.

“What if the concept of gravity no longer applied?”

“What if fire was cold?”

“What if you rewrote yourself?”

At first, it was impossible. Her mind rebelled against the very thought of breaking these fundamental truths. But the more she fought, the more she saw.

Reality wasn’t a rigid system of laws.

It was a story.

And she was learning to rewrite it.

She flicked her wrist. The air fractured like glass, then reformed into golden threads that stretched across the landscape.

A single word left her lips.

“Change.”

The world obeyed.

The ground became liquid. The sky collapsed inward, twisting into an endless tunnel of light.

And for the first time, Page didn’t feel like she was manipulating reality.

She felt like she was creating it.

---

Chapter 6: The Departure