Chapter 6: The Price of a Page
The Ironworks test changed the dynamics within Obsidian Tower. The squad didn't embrace Kaelen, but the rigid lines of hostility softened into a tense, professional acknowledgment. He was no longer just the anomaly; he was the anomaly that had anchored them through a temporal storm.
Inspector Vale, however, grew more somber, his scholarly excitement tempered by the reality of Solaris's scrutiny. He doubled Kaelen's sessions, but the focus shifted from "what can you do" to "what does it cost you."
"All power has a price, Kaelen," Vale said one afternoon, his usual notepad replaced by a series of etched crystal plates designed to measure soul-strain. "For normal mages, it's mana exhaustion. For you... it's something deeper. You're writing with your consciousness. Each edit leaves a mark."
As if to illustrate the point, Riven returned from a solo retrieval mission that evening with a new scar. It wasn't a normal wound. A jagged, silvery line ran from her wrist to her elbow, shimmering faintly even under the dim firelight. The skin around it was perfectly smooth, but the scar itself looked like a crack in porcelain.
"What in the hells is that?" Garrison grunted, pausing in his stone-polishing.
"Grimoire scar," Riven said, her voice tight as she cleaned her blades. "Target had a corrupted Silver-grade. Got desperate, tried to force a spell evolution mid-fight. Backlash tore his grimoire apart—took a couple of pages with it, I think. A shard of the concept got embedded." She flexed her arm, wincing. "Healer says it's permanent. The 'Sundering Slash' spell is burned into my flesh now. Hurts when it rains. Or when I use too much blood magic."
Kaelen stared, a cold pit forming in his stomach. The scar wasn't just a mark; it was a consequence. A piece of a broken spell, forever etched onto her.
"A WEAK NARRATIVE, FORCIBLY TOLD. ITS FRAGMENTS CUT DEEPEST," the voice in his grimoire murmured, a hint of disdain in its dryness.
"That's new," Silas observed from his corner, his frosty eyes analyzing the scar's pattern. "Most grimoire scars are internal—burned pages, locked spells. A physical manifestation is rare. It suggests the corrupted spell's concept was particularly violent or unstable."
"Feels plenty violent," Riven muttered.
The reality of Grimoire Scars settled over Kaelen. Power wasn't free. Overuse, forced evolution, catastrophic failure—they left permanent marks. He thought of the searing pain in his mind after defining the temporal field. Had he scarred something inside himself?
Vale confirmed his fears the next day in the Penumbral Stack. He showed Kaelen a case containing a Bronze grimoire. Its cover was intact, but when Vale carefully opened it with gloved hands, Kaelen saw the damage. Several pages in the middle were not just torn, but gone, leaving behind smooth, blank parchment as if they had never existed. Other pages were charred at the edges, the spells on them illegible.
"The bearer tried to cast a spell far beyond his page count," Vale explained. "The grimoire rejected the mana flow, and the feedback burned the knowledge from the book itself. Those spells are lost forever. He's a Bronze mage with a third of a Bronze's arsenal. His future evolution is also crippled—the grimoire's growth is stunted."
"He's... diminished," Kaelen said, the word heavy.
"Precisely. And this is a best-case scenario. The worst leave scars on the soul—personality shifts, obsessions, gaps in memory. Some call it Grimoire Insanity. The grimoire's nature begins to overwrite the user's own." Vale gave Kaelen a pointed look. "Your power is all about overwriting narratives. The risk for you is exponentially higher. You must be the author, not the page."
The lesson was seared into him. Every use of his power was a gamble with permanent stakes.
A few days later, Vale announced a field trip, but not into the city. "We're going to a Dead Zone," he said, gathering his equipment. "An area about a day's travel from the capital where ambient mana flows are chaotic and thin. Grimoires function poorly there. Spells fizzle. Mana recovery is glacial."
"Why would we go there?" Kaelen asked. The idea of being in a place where magic failed sounded like a nightmare.
"Two reasons. First, training. If you can learn to function where magic is weak, you'll be stronger where it is normal. Second, study. Dead Zones are often where Unclassified phenomena are more easily observed. The 'noise' of normal mana is gone."
The journey was made in a Guild carriage pulled by mana-insensitive draught horses. The Obsidian Squad came as escort, a silent, watchful presence. As they traveled, the landscape changed. The lush, magically-irrigated fields gave way to scrubland, then to a grey, rocky basin where the very air felt still and heavy. Colors seemed muted. Kaelen felt a strange… emptiness, like a constant hum he'd never noticed had suddenly ceased.
They stopped at the edge of a vast, shallow depression—the Dead Zone proper. In its center stood the ruins of a small watchtower, long abandoned.
"From here, mana drops to ten percent of normal," Vale said, checking a crystal device that glowed faintly. "Try to cast a simple spell, Silas."
Silas nodded, opening his grimoire. "Spell: Frost Dart." He spoke the words, and a shimmer of cold air coalesced at his fingertip. Instead of shooting forward as a sharp projectile, it formed a wobbly, weak sliver of ice that fell to the ground and shattered after a few feet. He frowned. "Casting time increased. Power decreased by roughly ninety percent. Mana cost feels… thicker."
Garrison tried next, attempting his Stonefist. His skin darkened only partially, taking on a rough, gritty texture rather than solid stone. He grunted in frustration. "Useless."
Riven simply shook her head, not even bothering. "My blood would just sit there, lazy."
"Now you, Kaelen," Vale said, his eyes gleaming.
Kaelen opened his grimoire. The usual resonance was dulled, but not gone. The void on the first page seemed less a distant presence and more… patient. Waiting. He focused on a nearby rock.
"THE LIES HERE ARE QUIETER. THE WORLD'S STORY IS FAINT. IT IS EASIER TO SPEAK OVER IT," the voice echoed, clear as ever.
He defined the rock: Unstable. Granular.
With a softhiss, the rock crumbled into gravel. The mental strain was less than doing the same thing in the mana-rich capital.
"He's unaffected," Silas stated, his analytical mind whirring. "His power source is independent of ambient mana."
"Worse than unaffected," Garrison rumbled, eyeing the gravel. "He's stronger here. Relative to us."
A complex look passed between the squad members. In a Dead Zone, they were crippled. Kaelen was not. He became, in that moment, not the weakest link, but the most dangerous person in the vicinity.
Vale was ecstatic. "Fascinating! Your power operates on a different axis entirely! This has huge implications for—"
A thunderous crack echoed across the basin, cutting him off.
From the ruins of the watchtower, three figures emerged. They didn't wear squad insignia or noble colors. Their clothing was a patchwork of practical leather and reinforced cloth, and their grimoires, openly displayed, were a mix of Silver and one Gold, but each was visibly altered. Extra pages seemed grafted on with metallic stitches. Strange runes, not part of any standard magical alphabet, glowed on their covers.
Rogue Clan.
The leader, a woman with a severe blonde braid and a gold-grimoire marked with swirling wind patterns that seemed to move too fast, stepped forward. Her eyes swept over them with cold recognition.
"Curator. Obsidian Guard. And... an interesting little shadow." Her voice carried easily in the dead air. "We're here for the site. The Mana-Void here is perfect for our work. You will leave."
"By whose authority?" Vale demanded, stepping forward, though his hand shook slightly.
"By the authority of the Sky-Cutter Clan," she said, as if it were explanation enough. "We answer to no kingdom's grimoire law. This place is ours by right of need. Your empire's rules don't stretch into the dead places."
Garrison moved in front of Vale, his partial Stonefist raised. "You're in imperial territory. Stand down."
The clan woman smiled, a thin, dangerous thing. "Your magic is a whisper here, stone-skin. Ours... we've learned to listen to a different song." She didn't open her grimoire. Instead, she made a sharp, cutting gesture with her hand. The air in front of her ripped, not with mana, but with a shrieking, localized vacuum that shot toward Garrison.
It was a Secret Technique—a spell not written in any grimoire, but passed down through clan training, muscle memory, and will.
Garrison crossed his arms, bracing. The vacuum slash hit him with the force of a battering ram, not exploding, but slicing. Even through his partial reinforcement, deep gashes opened on his forearms. He staggered back with a roar of pain, his grimoire flickering.
"Garrison!" Riven moved, but another clan member, a man with a Silver grimoire covered in shifting earth sigils, stomped the ground. The earth didn't rise up; it liquefied in a patch around Riven's feet, trapping her up to her knees in suddenly viscous stone.
Silas unleashed a volley of frost darts, but in the Dead Zone, they were pitifully slow. The third clan member, a lanky youth with a silver grimoire of lightning, waved a hand, and the darts shattered against a crackling, weak, but sufficient, barrier.
They were being dismantled. Their squad tactics, their grimoire magic, were neutered by the Dead Zone. The clan's techniques, honed to function with minimal ambient mana, were devastatingly effective.
The clan leader focused on Kaelen. "Your book feels like silence. A hungry silence. You'll come with us. The Clan Elders will want to study a true void-walker."
She gestured again, another silent, cutting vacuum aimed at his legs to cripple him.
Panic surged, but beneath it, the Anchor held. I am the will that persists.
In the Dead Zone,the world's story was faint. His was easier to tell.
He didn't try to block. He didn't have a spell for that. He opened his grimoire and defined the space between them.
This space is solid. This space is a wall.
It wasn't a physical barrier. It was a narrative one. He imposed the concept of "wall" onto the empty air.
The vacuum slash hit the defined space and stopped, dissipating with a sound like a sigh. There was no visible effect, no shimmering wall. The attack simply ceased to be, as if it had encountered an immovable truth.
The clan leader's eyes widened. "Not just a shadow. An editor." Her gaze turned from predatory to avaricious. "Take him! Alive!"
The earth-user tore his focus from Riven, aiming a fist at the ground beneath Kaelen. The stone rippled.
Kaelen's mind raced. He couldn't fight three of them, not while defending the others. He needed a bigger story. He looked at their grimoires, at the grafted pages, the foreign runes. They spoke of a different path, a rejection of standard law.
He made a choice.
He focused not on the individuals, but on the concept of their advantage. He poured his will into the grimoire, his nose beginning to bleed as the strain mounted.
Their techniques are not of this place. Their power is alien here. This ground rejects them.
He was proposing a new, local truth: that the Dead Zone itself was hostile to their clan magic.
The effect was not instantaneous. But the earth-user's liquefying spell sputtered, the ground solidifying again, freeing Riven. The lightning-barrier flickered. The clan leader's next vacuum cut went wide, tearing a gash in the dirt instead of its target.
It was a stopgap. A desperate, costly lie told to reality. But it bought seconds.
"Regroup!" Silas shouted, seeing the shift. He didn't waste mana on attacks. He used the last of his power to flash-freeze the ground at the clan's feet, not to hurt them, but to slow them, creating a slick, unstable surface.
Garrison, bleeding but furious, charged the earth-user, his sheer physical mass a weapon even without full magic.
Riven, free, blurred toward the lightning-caster, her daggers flashing in the grey light.
The clan leader snarled, her focus entirely on Kaelen now. She raised both hands, a larger, more complex tear in reality forming between them.
Kaelen was spent. The blood from his nose was a steady stream now. He couldn't define another major concept. He braced for the attack.
It never came.
A thunderclap, not of magic, but of pure, concussive force, erupted above them. A figure dropped from the sky, landing between Kaelen and the clan leader with an impact that cracked the basin floor. It was a man in the white-and-gold armor of a Justicar, but different from Solaris. His Platinum grimoire blazed with the image of a crashing comet.
"Sky-Cutter scavengers," the new Justicar boomed, his voice laced with contempt. "The Dead Zones are not your sanctuary. They are your graves."
He didn't cast a spell. He simply unleashed pressure—a wave of dense, crushing mana that flattened the air. In the Dead Zone, it should have been weak. But his power was so immense, so fundamentally solid, that it transcended the ambient lack. The clan members were thrown backwards, their techniques snuffed out like candles.
The leader spat blood, shooting a look of pure hatred at Kaelen and the Justicar. "This isn't over, editor. The clans remember the Blank Pages." With a final, slashing gesture, she tore a hole in the air itself—a ragged portal—and the three of them fell backwards through it, vanishing.
Silence returned, heavier than before.
The new Justicar turned. He was older than Solaris, his face scarred, his eyes like chips of flint. He looked at the battered Obsidian Squad, at the bleeding Kaelen, and finally at Vale.
"Justicar Ignatius," Vale breathed, bowing his head. "Of the Canon Brigade."
Ignatius's gaze fixed on Kaelen's Unclassified grimoire. "So. The report was accurate. A live one." There was no curiosity in his voice, only the grim finality of a executioner inspecting his blade. "You told a story that even the Dead Zone listened to, boy. That is a dangerous talent."
He looked at the spot where the clan had vanished. "The clans are stirring. They smell weakness. And they hunger for weapons like you." He turned to leave, then paused, delivering his verdict like a hammer blow.
"Your training is no longer a curiosity. It is a necessity. The empire faces threats that do not play by the rules of mana. You may be one of them. Or you may be the only one who can fight them. Do not make us choose which."
He launched into the sky, a golden streak against the grey.
Kaelen sank to his knees, the adrenaline gone, leaving only pain and a profound, chilling understanding. He had faced a Rogue Clan and survived only because a greater power intervened. His ability made him a target. His growth was now a strategic imperative. And the cost of his next page would be higher than he could imagine.
Riven helped him up, her grip firm. "Clan marks on their necks," she muttered to Silas. "Saw them when they ran."
Silas nodded, his face pale. "This was not a chance encounter. They were waiting for us. Or for him." He looked at Kaelen, not with fear now, but with a soldier's grim assessment. "The game has changed. You are no longer just an experiment. You are a contested asset in a hidden war."
As they limped back to the carriage, Kaelen clutched his grimoire. The mirror page showed his bloodied, exhausted face. Behind his reflection, the twin stars of the void burned with a cold, steady light.
In the echoing silence of the Dead Zone, a single, grafted page torn from a Sky-Cutter grimoire fluttered to the ground where the portal had been. On it was written not a spell, but a name, in the clan's secret script—a name from forbidden history that matched the resonance of Kaelen's power. It was a name that meant "World-Ender." And beneath it, a single, chilling question: "Heir or Imposter?"