Elias took a deep, shaky breath, the high-Aether atmosphere fueling his instructional focus. He needed to be precise.
"The Archive teaches that Scribes are superior because we read the original documents, the laws themselves," Elias began, leaning the wisdom of the ages into his weak voice. "But the law isn't just on parchment; it is literally woven into your body, Kaelin. Your movement, your speed, your strength—they are all governed by Kinetic Runes. The etchings on your gear are merely suggestions to the Realm's existing script; they are shortcuts."
He gestured to her massive short-sword.
"The real Rune of Momentum is in the Aether of your arm—the fundamental law that dictates how much kinetic energy your body can generate. Watch, and feel the change."
Elias reached out and, with an agonizingly slow effort, forced a microscopic thread of Aether Ink from his fingertip. He targeted the space around Kaelin's sword, but not the sword itself. He targeted the Rune of Momentum that governed the air's resistance to the sword's movement.
He performed the smallest, most subtle correction—a tiny script of Zero Friction around the blade's edge. This was an act of pure, surgical script refinement, not rewriting.
Kaelin immediately felt the change—an unsettling conceptual slickness in the air. She instinctively swung the sword in a short arc. The blade sliced through the dense Aether of the Realm with a faint, almost imperceptible whine—silent, frictionless, and impossibly fast. It was beyond her physical capacity.
"I didn't change the law of the sword; I changed the law of the air around it," Elias said, exhausted by the minimal effort. "But that required my Aether. Now, you try. Look at your own arm, Kaelin. Not with your eyes. Look at the scripts of your muscles, your bone density, and the energy flowing through you."
Kaelin closed her eyes, forcing her Road-Scribe instincts for brute force into submission. She focused on the feeling of speed—the moment her mind commanded movement. She saw it: not as a script, but as a shimmering, crude green line of energy that represented her innate Rune of Momentum. It was strong, but inefficient, with conceptual flaws—the 'wobble' of wasted energy.
"I see a green light," she said, her voice filled with quiet wonder. "It's faint, but it's there. It's wobbling heavily."
"That wobble is wasted power, and in this Realm, it's a weakness," Elias instructed, his energy flagging rapidly. "Now, draw the script in your mind. Don't push Aether into it. Just command it to be sharper. Cleaner.
Reduce the wobble in the line."
Kaelin focused, applying a mental discipline she had never known she possessed. She mentally tightened the shimmering green line of the Rune of Momentum, enforcing conceptual discipline.
She opened her eyes and swung her sword again. The speed was not only enhanced, it was precise. The blade cut exactly where she intended, with zero deviation. She felt a profound increase in her physical capacity, all without expending a single unit of external Aether Ink. It was self-mastery.
She spent another half hour practicing, the sound of her impossibly fast sword movements slicing the high-Aether air in controlled, silent arcs. She was a natural, quickly understanding how to apply conceptual polish to the simple, physical laws of her own existence. By mentally polishing the Rune of Deflection on her armor, she was soon able to shrug off the force of her own practice swings, redirecting the kinetic force seamlessly.
"I can fight ten times better now," Kaelin declared, finally sheathing her blade. "It's like I'm finally reading the instruction manual for my own body. Thank you, Scribe."
"Good," Elias murmured, nearly collapsing.
"Now, your part of the bargain. I need silence. Absolute conceptual silence. I need to force my core to replenish the Aether Ink."
Elias settled back against the raw, glowing Aether crystal. He initiated the desperate process of recovery. His mind, still overwhelmed by the Archivist Realm's perfect scripts, needed to shut down all external perception and focus only inward—on the shattered, empty vessel that was his Aether Core. He had to write a script for his mind alone: the Rune of Internal Safety, forcing his own conceptual irrelevance upon himself.
While Elias was deep within this forced conceptual nullity, far above, in the distant, towering Crystalline Tower of Compliance, the Overseer received confirmation of the Rewriter's Aetheric blackout. The chaotic energy signature was gone, replaced by a subtle, continuous silence. The Rewriter was successfully using self-imposed Aetheric nullity—a high-level conceptual defense.
This was no longer a rogue Scribe; this was a serious, emergent threat. The Overseer wove a new, complex command—a script that bypassed all local Guardian authority. It targeted the Rewriter's only known constant: his addiction to Runes of Knowledge.
The command was directed at a location two days' journey from Elias's position, a ruined outpost known as the Scriptorium of the Broken Law. The Overseer's script was simple and devastatingly effective:
Activate the Rune of Absolute Conceptual Attraction at the Scriptorium. Broadcast the unique frequency of the Rune of Displacement's final, forbidden strokes. The Rewriter will be drawn by his addiction to knowledge. Once integrated, quarantine the Scriptorium.
The Overseer had decided to use the Rewriter's own hunger against him. The law was no longer chasing Elias; the law was luring him with the irresistible promise of the Displacement Rune's ultimate mastery.
Suddenly, Elias stirred. Despite the mental silence he had forced upon himself, a foreign conceptual signal penetrated his consciousness—a pure, golden frequency that resonated with the deepest core of his defect-sight. It was the sound of unwritten law, the perfect, missing strokes of the Rune of Displacement he had sought his entire life. It called to him with a hungry, absolute authority.
Elias's eyes snapped open. The exhaustion was gone, replaced by a single-minded, manic focus. He knew that sound. It was the promise of true escape. He didn't know where it was coming from, only that he had to go there. He rose unsteadily, compelled by an irresistible conceptual hunger that superseded all rational thought and self-preservation.
Kaelin saw the immediate, radical shift in his posture—the deep exhaustion replaced by a terrifying, magnetic compulsion.
"Where are you going, Scribe?" she demanded, grabbing her short-sword.
"The Scriptorium," Elias rasped, his eyes glassy, fixed on a direction only his mind could perceive. "The Rune of Displacement. It's complete. It's calling me. I need the final stroke."
End of Chapter 7