The riverbank was a dangerous sanctuary. The cold night air bit through their scant prison rags, but the eleven Written and Felix barely felt it. The giddy draft of freedom and purpose was a warmer cloak. They were a group of ghosts, huddled in the reeds, their breath clouding in the moonlight as they plotted to topple a kingdom.Yet ghosts, having once been flesh, have needs. They needed food, refuge, and information. Most of all, they needed to know if they had any allies left in a city now overrun by Kael's Order of Purity.The Alliance is scattered," Felix said, his voice low. The Codex had come back, but the web of its Annotations across the city showed only terror and isolation. Safe houses were dark. Rendezvous points were watched. "Kael's inquisition has turned the city against itself.".Theron, his gaze sweeping the black waters as if reading a book of history, nodded. "We need a foothold in the citadel itself. A source of information from the belly of the beast."Every gaze

Admiration that replaced Felix's rebuff of the crown was as fleeting as ink on water. Rumors, initially of wonder, soon turned to suspicion, and then hardened to accusation. The space he had vacated was not long empty. It was taken over not by politicians or warriors, but by an infinitely more deadly crew: custodians of history herself.The Great Scriptorium of Aethyr was not a light or a comfortable space. It was a ringing, vaulted room where the air was thick with centuries of dust and the sour tang of alchemical preservatives. Sunlight struggled through narrow, high-stained-glass windows depicting the first scribes receiving divine inspiration, casting splashed beams of light that played over spinning motes of parchment dust. This was the essence of the kingdom's official knowledge, the shrine in which history was not merely recorded, but witnessed, sanitized, and consecrated. And now it was a court.Felix alone stood in the center of the hall on a circular marble floor known as th

Quiet had never been so quiet. In the small, stonewalled room a now too-terrified noble had provided, Felix finally allowed the trembles to come out. The bravado he'd displayed in the Scriptorium, the icy calm that had stripped bare a thousand years of lies, was gone, replaced with chilly, hollow exhaustion. His own hands, which had held the Codex so tightly, now shook as he poured a cup of water. The cup rang against the rim of the pitcher, a faint, pathetic sound in the stifling quiet.The Scriptorium's chaos still echoed through his mind—the wails of scholars, the turn of pages re-writing themselves, the total collapse of Archivist Theron. He had not simply won a trial; he had performed an act of intellectual deicide. He had slain a god named Official History, and the fallout was an eternity of terrible possibility.He placed the Codex on the crudely cut wooden table. It lay out, dead, its writhing, wood-grain cover dull and matte now. It looked like what it was supposed to be: a b

The news came to the capital like a plague-wind, cold and reeking of certainty. The Obsidian Wing, a mercenary battalion funded by a coalition of border lords and the holdouts of Kael's decimated cult, advanced towards them. Their leader, a hard, cold pragmatist named Vorlag, had seen the chaos in the capital—the fall of the monarchy, the discredited scribes, the young council of stewards—and smelled blood in the water. He did not go to claim a throne or on the cause of an ideal; he went for the spoils of a kingdom that appeared to have cut off its own tendons.In the council chambers, there was fear one could feel. Shaking with his hands, Minister Valerius pointed to a map. "They have bypassed the high fortresses! They move with unholy speed! They will be at the gates within three days!"Arguments erupted. Some soldiers demanded the final, desperate cry for terms of negotiation. Others demanded mass conscription of the city's citizens, a bloody last stand that would clear the streets

Official dispatches leaking out of the capital spoke of a "successful defense" and a "negotiated withdrawal." Masterpieces of bureaucratic obfuscation, they were written by the new council's scribes, who were still learning the art of putting into words events that defied description. But the truth, Felix was learning, had a life of its own and did not rely on official sources. It spread not on parchment, but on the breath of travelers, in the songs of bards, and in the wide-eyed whispers of merchants who had seen the impossible.The story that spread through the kingdom was not one of diplomacy. It was a myth that came to life. It was the story of the Ghost Plains, where the land itself had risen up to consume an army. It was the story of the Teacher who alone stood against the gates, a shining book in his hand, and summoned the world's most ancient guardians. By campfires and in taverns, the details were embellished—the Stone-Scaled Gorgon grew as big as a mountain, the Ember-Phanto