Dominus staggered backward.
Not from impact—Kael hadn't touched him—but from something far worse:
A rewrite he didn't author.
SFX: (ƒZZZZT—ƒCHRRRRR—ƒVNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN)
Syntax rippled across Dominus's skin like shredding wallpaper. Holy glyphs cracked open, leaking white-hot scripture light that sizzled down his robes in melting lines.
He clutched his skull and screeched,
"What—what is THIS?! I did not PERMIT a counter-edit!"
Kael didn't answer.
Couldn't.
His jaw was half-translucent now—ink bleeding through bone, flickering between versions of a face that hadn't decided which shape it preferred. His ribs shifted outward like dark petals, retracting and pulsing in slow, predatory breaths.
He wasn't evolving.
He was rewriting.
And the rewrite was hungry.
Seraphine saw the change first. Her eyes widened, breath catching as she murmured,
"His existence is forking—Kael, you're splitting into parallel selves—"
Veyra grabbed Lirien's wrist, nails digging in hard as she snapped,
"Don't describe it! Descriptions stabilize edits!"
Too late.
The moment the words hit the air, three afterimages of Kael blurred into existence—one snarling, one silent, one sobbing ink. They overlapped, fused, tore apart again.
The sky bent like a warped lens.
The ground pulsed like a throat trying to swallow the battlefield.
Dominus attempted to regain control. He raised his hand, traced a glowing command:
[ LIMIT-VERSIONS: KAEL = 1 ]
A beam of holy correction shot toward Kael.
It hit—
—then screamed.
The rewrite snapped.
Not Kael.
The edit.
It twisted in mid-air, folding inward like a serpent biting its own spine, and then launched backward toward Dominus.
SFX: (KRAK-THWUMMMMMMM)
The beam slammed directly into his chest, burrowing through armor, ribs, and sanctified organs.
Veyra flinched as the saint's body convulsed violently, scripture light spraying out of his mouth in a choking stream.
Dominus blurted,
"I—I didn't write that—"
Kael's voice rumbled, layered, echoing with multiple versions speaking at once:
"I know."
Dominus's knees buckled.
The battlefield shook.
The other Saints—those still alive—looked horrified. Not at Kael.
At the edit that just rebelled.
Saint Meridian hollered,
"Edits don't self-reverse! The rule engine can't turn on its—"
Her words cut off as her spine snapped into a question mark.
An edit she herself had fired minutes ago—
[ BEND: TARGET ]—
crawled out of her shadow and wrapped around her bones, obeying its original parameters but replacing target with author.
SFX: (BRRRRRRRRRR-KRAK-K-LK-K-K-KPOP)
Her body folded, inverted, and collapsed into a wet pile of shimmering glyphs.
Seraphine gagged, whispering through her hand as she muttered,
"This isn't Kael's aura… this is the Book retaliating… his existence is forcing the edits to choose him over their creators…"
Veyra stepped in front of Kael, thorns raised like living armor. Her voice shook as she vowed,
"Then let it pick. If the Book wants a new author—fine. It just can't have him alone."
Kael's internal monologue fractured, overlapping, spiraling:
I'm slipping. I'm splitting. They're watching me fall apart.
I can't— I don't want them hurt—
Stay. Stay with me. Please stay—
I can't hold one shape— I'm not enough—
No. No. I choose them. I choose—
A shockwave blasted outward from his chest.
Ink shot from Kael's ribs like tendrils—long, thin, trembling like newborn limbs. They lashed across the ground, slamming through scripture lines, devouring holy geometry, rewriting the battlefield into something raw and wrong and deeply alive.
And the Saints panicked.
Saint Rhyos exclaimed,
"Cut him loose! Break the anchor points! Let him destabilize entirely!"
Saint Kanna demanded,
"Force the collapse! Delete the vessel before—"
A tendril slashed across her jaw, shearing it clean off.
Not surgically.
Not neatly.
It carved through her head as though cutting wet fabric, leaving her lower face hanging by threads of half-rewritten glyphs. She tried to scream, but only a spray of consonants gurgled from the torn opening.
Kael stumbled forward.
Veyra caught him.
Lirien caught him from the other side.
He leaned into them as his body flickered, three versions merging, fighting, harmonizing.
Veyra pressed her forehead to his chest and begged,
"Don't disappear. Don't un-write. Hold on to something. To us."
Seraphine wrapped her arms around his waist, voice shaking as she confessed,
"You don't have to be one version—just don't be zero."
Kael's breath hitched.
His pulse stuttered.
His versions aligned.
And his voice—still layered, still echoing—spoke a single word:
"…Okay."
The battlefield stilled.
Every remaining saint froze.
Because the moment Kael accepted them—
—the rewrite engine triggered something ancient.
Something forbidden.
Something that made Dominus's eyes fill with genuine terror.
A glyph burned onto Kael's spine, glowing with newborn authority:
[ AUTHOR ]
Not metaphor.
Not title.
Permission.
Kael had earned the one thing no mortal—or saint—should ever receive:
Edit access to reality.
Dominus fell to one knee.
Not in reverence.
In absolute fear.
"Don't," he whispered, trembling. "Don't do this. You don't know what you are."
Kael stepped forward.
The ground rewrote itself under his feet.
Ink rose to crown him.
His heartbeat synced with the world's syntax.
And the first real counter-edit of the war began forming at his fingertips.
The Saints didn't even have time to run.