Outside the palace, the world was far more visceral. The "Protocol of the Void" had failed to kill Livius, but it had ignited a fanatical madness in the remaining members of The Guardian Family. To them, the failure of the ritual was a sign that the "Devil" had taken the Prince's form. They surged toward the palace gates, their gray armor scarred and smoking, their eyes wide with the desperate light of religious martyrdom.
"Hold the line!" Cian shouted, his voice cracking with the strain. He was standing atop the barricaded palace doors, not with a sword, but with a series of massive, glowing crystals he had scavenged from the laboratory.
Cian wasn't a warrior, but he was the master of the "Specter's Eye." He knew the exact breaking point of every piece of armor the Guardians wore. He knew the resonance frequency of their shields.
"Raven, thirty degrees to the left! The Patriarch's joint-seals are overheating!"
Raven was a blur of black silk and obsidian steel. She didn't engage the Guardians in a direct clash of strength; she moved like a shadow in a forest of iron. She danced between the heavy swings of their claymores, her daggers finding the tiny, millimeter-wide gaps in their neck guards. Every time she struck, a Guardian fell, their soul-killing mana leaking into the cobblestones like spilled oil.
"There are too many of them, Chancellor!" Raven cried out, parrying a blow that sent sparks flying into her face. "The Protocol is still drawing ambient mana! They're being fueled by the city itself!"
Cian looked at the "Void Runes" beneath his feet. They were still pulsing with a faint, violet light. He realized then that the ritual wasn't just a battery for the Emperor; it was a circuit that connected every citizen to the palace. The Guardians were literally draining the life-force of the sleeping people to fuel their assault.
"If we don't break the circuit, they'll never stop," Cian muttered. He looked at the heavy, iron-bound book in his hand—Vaelin's records. There was a page he had seen, a footnote about the "Foundation Stone" of the palace. It wasn't a stone; it was a "Seal of Silence."
Cian didn't hesitate. He bit his finger, drawing a drop of blood, and smeared it across the ancient parchment. He didn't have the Dragon blood, but he had something the Argentines had long forgotten: the "Contract of the Scribe." He was the witness of history, and as the witness, he had the power to close the book.
"By the ink that records the truth!" Cian screamed, slamming the book onto the palace threshold. "I declare this chapter finished!"
A shockwave of white light—not the gold of the sun or the silver of the moon, but the pure, neutral white of paper—exploded from the book. It didn't kill the Guardians; it simply disconnected them. The violet runes went dark. The soul-killing light on their swords evaporated. The city's life-force snapped back to its rightful owners.
The Guardians collapsed, their heavy armor suddenly becoming an unbearable weight. They lay in the dirt, gasping for air, their "divine mission" revealed to be nothing more than a parasitic dream.
"Raven..." Cian wheezed, falling to his knees as the effort drained his own stamina. "Check the gates. We... we have to hold until he comes back."