The door to The Weeping Willow splintered inward. Vorlag soldiers, armored in blood-red steel and wielding halberds tipped with reality-dampening crystals, flooded the cramped space. Patrons screamed, overturning tables and scrambling for cover. The lead guard’s eyes scanned the room, locking onto Arin the curator—and the scroll in his hand.“Seize the heretics! By order of Lord Vorlag, all who challenge the true prophecy die!”Ryna moved first. Her crossbow hissed, and a guard crumpled with a bolt in his shoulder joint. She became a whirlwind of calculated violence, using chairs and tankards as improvised weapons, her movements too swift for the heavily armored soldiers. But there were too many. They began forming a shield wall, advancing relentlessly.“The heir!” Liora shouted again, ducking a wild swing from a guard. “The Codex made them, but it didn’t deliver them to our doorstep! We need to find who it’s meant for!”Felix’s mind raced. The Codex had spoken of a vessel, a person w

The air in the town square, moments before filled with the triumph of Mordren's defeat, turned icy. The Scriptorium wasn't just sending an audit team; they were sending an extermination squad. The truth had become too dangerous to contain, so they would erase the container."Scorch the earth." Kira whispered, her grip tightening on her warhammer. The glow of the Crimson Justice pulsed around her, now feeling less like a mantle of power and more like a target. "They'll kill everyone. Burn the town to the ground and salt the earth so nothing grows, not even a story.""We have six hours," Felix said, his mind already shifting into survival mode. "We can't fight a Scriptorium army head-on. We need to fortify. We need to make this town indigestible.""Indigestible?" Elian asked, looking at the simple wooden buildings and crumbling stone walls. "With what army?""Not with an army," Felix said, a dangerous glint in his eye. "With history. Codex, full analysis of the town's historical and geo

The victory at Last Stand had tasted bitter. The villagers had feasted on their survival, their new reality, and their Crimson Justice. But Felix could feel the void in his chest where his brother once sat—a hollow shelf in the library of his mind. The cost of saving Emily's memory had been a piece of his own foundation.The coordinates Lyra had sent smoldered in the Codex's screen: the location of the First Scribe's tools. Waiting until dawn, however, felt like a betrayal. The town was wounded, and Kira's new office was untested."They need you," Liora breathed alongside him, her tone soft as they watched the people of the town begin the long work of reconstruction. "But the world needs those tools. The 'Final Page' is no metaphor, Felix. It's a weapon.""Analysis of the term 'Final Page' suggests a meta-narrative occurrence," the Codex continued. "One scripture that would overwrite all of existence, back to a point of total Scriptorium control. All of history, all free will, would b

The void where his brother's memory had sat was an empty, throbbing pit in Felix's chest, a ghost limb of the heart. The encounter with the Unwritten had unsettled them all. The universe was a fragile membrane pulled across a screaming void, and any use of the Quill was a ring on the glass with a hammer.They needed answers the Codex was not able to provide. They needed grimy, dusty, plain history. The kind not stored in tombs or libraries, but in the rumor-filled halls of power."Feast of Blades," Liora said, touching a golden invitation against the skiff's screen. A soiree for the galaxy's crème de la crème—a masquerade and tournament hosted by the powerful House Venator, celebrating their "eternal and noble" bloodline. "Half the Signatory Houses will come. The ones that branded you 'Enemy of the Quill.' They will be drunk on wine and egos. Secrets will run amok."."It's a trap," Ryna said straight out. "They'll be expecting you.""That's why we won't be me," Felix said, a plan taki

The rebellion symphony was something the Inquisitors were powerless against. The Iron Monastery, a building designed to impose absolute narrative silence, echoed now with the noise of unwanted truths. The dampening field flared and died, and with it, the intellectual scaffolding on Felix's manacles. He was free.Alarms screamed—a harsh, metal cry that was the antithesis of prisoners' defiant hymn. The flawless black walls of cells grew flawed with bursts of frantic Inquisitors and Quiet Guard dashing along the corridors.Felix had no strategy. He had momentum. He shouldered his shoulder against his cell wall, and without its story integrity, it was nothing more than rock. It shattered. He bashed it again, and a piece dropped into the cell beside him.The tenant—a creature of changing light and murmured figures—graciously nodded and oozed out into the corridor, its shape dissolving into a cloud of possibility that short-circuited the incoming guards' firearms.This was the pattern. Fel