"The Archivists don't see it that way," Garrick said, pacing the cramped space between the cots, his golden aura flickering with nervous energy. "The High Priest... his presence is suffocating, Kaelen. He's not here to check on our health. He said the Heavens felt a 'blasphemous edit' in the lower levels. They think someone down there was using forbidden magic."
Garrick stopped pacing and looked at Kaelen, his expression softening with genuine brotherly concern. "Don't worry. I won't let them touch you or Elara. I'll tell them the truth. I overpowered the trap, the floor gave out, and I used a Nova Fall to kill the beast. That's the script. I'm the Vanguard. I take the blame."
Kaelen nodded slowly. You have no idea, Garrick. Your truth is exactly what's going to get me killed.
If the High Priest was an agent of the Heavens, he wouldn't just listen to Garrick's words; he would read the "prose" of Garrick's soul. When he saw that Garrick's magical output didn't mathematically match the sheer reality-breaking damage of the deleted floor or the atomized Draft Boss, the Inquisitor would immediately start looking for the real culprit.
"They want me in the command tent first," Garrick sighed, adjusting his pauldron. "Rest, Kaelen. I'll handle the Heavens."
Garrick turned and pushed through the heavy canvas flap, stepping back out into the torrential rain.
The moment the flap fell shut, Kaelen threw his legs over the side of the cot. His muscles screamed in protest, and his head throbbed, but he ignored it. He couldn't go into his own interrogation blind. He needed to know exactly what questions the Inquisitor was asking.
He had sixty seconds.
Kaelen closed his eyes and visualized the charcoal smearing over his own name in the grand manuscript.
"Redact," he whispered.
The physical toll was immediate and nauseating. The ambient sound of the rain drumming on the tent instantly vanished, replaced by a deafening, pressurized silence. Kaelen looked down at his hands. They were gone. In their place was a shifting, chaotic blur of dark gray static—like a word that had been violently scribbled out with thick ink.
He didn't walk; he glided. The physical weight of his body was temporarily erased from the world's physics.
He slipped through the tent flap without moving the canvas. Outside, the Vanguard camp was a miserable sea of mud and rain, but Kaelen left no footprints. He was a ghost in the margins.
He moved swiftly toward the large, imposing command pavilion at the center of the camp. Standing guard outside were two figures that made Kaelen's breath hitch.
They weren't Vanguard soldiers. They were Holy Guards. They wore armor of polished white enamel, completely devoid of scratches or mud, defying the storm around them. Their faces were hidden behind featureless, blank silver visors. They were the literal punctuation marks of the Gods, enforcing the rules of the story.
Kaelen slipped right between them. Neither guard flinched. Redact was absolute.
Inside the pavilion, the air was heavy with the scent of burning frankincense and ozone. Garrick stood at attention in the center of the room.
Seated behind the heavy oak command desk was the High Priest. He was a gaunt, terrifyingly still man wearing robes of deep, midnight blue woven with shifting silver text. His eyes were entirely white, lacking pupils or irises, staring blankly ahead as if reading a book only he could see.
Hovering in the air between the Priest and Garrick was a glowing, golden projection of an open book.
"...and then the beast fell," Garrick was saying, his voice tight. "I channeled my Supreme Core, synced with Elara's wind affinity, and executed a Nova Fall. The monster was atomized. The cavern collapsed immediately after."
The High Priest did not blink. He reached out a long, skeletal finger and gently traced the air above the golden book.
"Your words ring with the resonance of truth, Vanguard Garrick," the Priest's voice was like dry parchment scraping against stone. "The Heavens acknowledge your bravery. However..."
The golden book violently flared red.
"The manuscript is bruised," the Priest whispered, leaning forward. "Your Nova Fall accounts for the destruction of the beast. It does not account for the localized deletion of fifty tons of obsidian stone prior to the encounter. The syntax of the trap was not broken. It was erased."
Kaelen, standing perfectly still in the corner of the tent, felt a warm drop of liquid hit his upper lip.
He looked at the blue Interface hovering in his peripheral vision.
[REDACT TIMER: 15 Seconds Remaining]
Warning: Text-bleeding initiated.
Blackish-red blood was dripping from Kaelen's nose, hitting the floorboards. Because he was erased from the story, the blood was invisible as it fell, but the moment it left his "blurred" aura and touched the floor, it would materialize.
He had to leave. Now.
"I don't know anything about erased stone," Garrick said stubbornly, crossing his arms. "The dungeon was old. It collapsed. We barely survived."
The Priest's blank white eyes narrowed. "You were not alone. You traveled with a healer, Elara. Her prose is standard. Predictable. But the third... the unawakened boy. Kaelen Vane."
The Priest tapped the golden book, and the pages rapidly flipped.
"An anomaly," the Priest hissed softly. "A background character with no magical core, yet he survives a structural deletion that should have atomized his mortal vessel. Bring the boy to me. The Heavens wish to read his margins."
[REDACT TIMER: 05 Seconds Remaining]
Kaelen didn't wait. He turned and sprinted silently for the exit, slipping past the Holy Guards just as the Priest issued the command.
He burst back into the storm, tearing across the mud toward the medical tent.
[3... 2... 1...]
Kaelen threw himself through the flap of his tent and crashed onto his cot.
The silence shattered. The deafening roar of the rain returned all at once. The gray static of his body instantly snapped back into flesh and bone. Kaelen violently rolled onto his side, coughing up a mouthful of black, ink-stained blood into a washbasin.
His head felt like it had been split open with an axe. The physical strain of deleting himself from reality was agonizing. But he had the information. He knew exactly what the Priest was looking for: the missing syntax of the obsidian trap.
Footsteps sloshed through the mud outside his tent. Heavy, armored footsteps.
The canvas flap was pulled back, and a Holy Guard ducked inside, his featureless silver visor locking onto Kaelen, who was wiping the last of the blood from his chin.
"Kaelen Vane," the Guard's voice echoed from within the helm, devoid of all emotion. "The Archivists require your presence."
Kaelen slowly stood up, letting his unawakened, gray magical core settle into its weakest, most pathetic state. He forced a look of terrified, innocent confusion onto his face.
"Lead the way," Kaelen said.