The truth, when published, did not simply correct the record. It was a solvent, breaking down the glue that held a decaying society together. The show of the beast-legion had been a thunderclap, but the quiet, pervasive acceptance of the "Codex Truths" by the public was the insidious, creeping rain that followed. And now the levee was bursting.It began not with an edict, but with a stench. The heavy scent of smoke, combined with the expensive smells of burned velvet and varnished wood, gradually filled the noble district of the capital. A column of thick, black smoke had originally been seen at Lord Braydon's manor house, the same lord who had grumbled about mutinous serfs. He had not waited for a horde. At midnight, he and his household had loaded their most dear possessions onto a wagon train, and in the act of departure, had set fire to the manor house. It was an act of angry completeness, a declaration that if he could not be king there, then no one would ever get to possess what

The exodus of the nobles was not a clean break. It was a slow seepage of power, a dispersal of terror and bitterness that permeated the surrounding kingdoms and the dark corners of Aethyra itself. The lords and ladies who had fled the capital did not vanish; they regrouped in walled estates, in the courts of sympathetic neighboring rulers, and in the smoky back rooms of frontier-town taverns. And there, in their self-imposed exile, their fear began to curdle into a new, more poisonous venom: conspiracy.At first, the rumors were absurd, nothing else but the ravings of the displaced. They labeled Felix Kane a demon, a wizard, a being from a world better left unremembered. But these were emotional outbursts, lacking the coherence to pose any actual danger to him. They were the sounds of an animal suffering, not the strategic move of a predator.The transformation began with Lord Braydon. Sitting in a chill castle that belonged to a cousin, surrounded by the miserable remnants of his for

The revelation of the Codex's new power settled in Felix not as a triumph, but as a somber and weighty responsibility. The power to "Erase Corruption" was less a weapon in his thoughts and more a surgical instrument of horrific precision. It demanded a wisdom he wasn't sure he possessed. To use it capriciously was to court becoming a despot of purity, cleansing the world of any unsightly blot. He needed a trial, a closed circumstance wherein the corruption was evident, the need was great, and the risk was not the human heart but the tortured earth itself.He received his answer in the Ashen Vale.A two-day journey south of the capital, the Vale was a scar on the earth. A century ago, a catastrophic war among rival mages had not only killed soldiers; it had poisoned the earth itself. The streams ran with a sluggish, metallic water that killed any creature that took a drink from them. The ground was a grey, lifeless powder that repelled seed and root. The air itself was heavy with a des

The Ashen Vale miracle had an impact that radiated outward beyond farmers' thanks and the wonder of the capital. It disturbed a different, much loftier plane of existence. Felix had not just healed land; he had performed a cosmic repair, an editorial decision on a scale that could not be ignored. The silent, watching presence that he had felt ever since the Codex's whisper now felt more like a gathering storm rather than one of being observed.The emissary arrived on a night when the moon was a thin, sharp sliver, slicing across the sky. There was no heraldry, no announcement. The guards marched along the perimeter of library grounds one moment, then a presence stood at the edge of the ring of fire, waiting in unnatural stillness.He was tall and unnaturally lean, shrouded in robes whose grey was so intense they seemed to draw in the dim light. A sodden hood concealed his face, but in that blackness there were no lines or outlines, only a deeper pool of hollowness. He carried no sword

The Silent Manuscript was a cipher, a weight in his pack both physical and spiritual. It altered the atmosphere about Felix. Capital politics, the respectful wariness of the people, even Kael's vow for vengeance—all now became the absent-minded thrashing of beetles on the single leaf of a tree whose magnitude he only slowly came to appreciate.He kept the manuscript hidden, even from Liora. To speak of it was dangerous, as though calling attention to it would attract attention itself. Instead, he spent each day in a kind of wired tension, reading the Codex not for Aethyran history, but for hints of itself. He searched for anomalies, sequences which implied that there was more to existence than what he saw. The emissary's phrase—"the Great Narrative"—rang repeatedly in his head. Was Aethyra just a paragraph? A chapter?It did not come wildly as a vision, nor thunderously as a voice. It came gently, irresistibly, as he sat drawing in glittering lines the "Erase Corruption" rune. He was