The emerald light faded, leaving the small, hollowed-out alcove bathed in the dim, flickering orange glow of Garrick's miniature solar flame.
"There," Elara whispered, her voice tight with exhaustion. She sat back on her heels, wiping a bead of sweat from her brow. "The muscle tissue is knitted back together, but you're going to be sore for a week, Kaelen. And I can't do anything about the blood loss."
Kaelen leaned against the damp, jagged wall of the cavern, his chest heaving as if he had just run a marathon. He looked at his shoulder. The flesh was whole, sealed beneath his shredded tunic with only a pale pink scar remaining, but the phantom pain still echoed down to his fingertips.
Worse than the shoulder, however, was the inside of his skull.
Using Glimpse to read the upcoming syntax of the hounds' attack, followed by Typo to snap the stalactite, had felt like someone had driven a rusted iron nail through his temples. His brain felt like a crumpled piece of parchment that had been smoothed out too many times.
A warm drop of liquid slid down his upper lip.
Before he could raise his hand, Elara was there with a clean scrap of linen, gently dabbing at his nose. Her silver-blonde hair framed her face like a halo in the dim light, but her eyes were dark with worry.
"This is the third time your nose has bled since the rockfall," she said, her healer's instincts on high alert. Her fingers rested against his pulse point. "Your heart rate is erratic, Kaelen. You didn't hit your head when the tunnel collapsed, did you?"
"I'm fine, El," Kaelen rasped, forcing a reassuring smile that felt entirely unnatural. "Just swallowed too much dust. And the Ink in the air down here is heavy. You know I don't have the core to process it."
"He's right," Garrick muttered from the mouth of the alcove.
The golden boy wasn't glowing with his usual boundless optimism. He stood with his back to them, staring out into the dark, winding tunnels of the Drafts, his jaw clenched so tight the muscles twitched.
"I have a Supreme Core," Garrick said softly, his voice echoing with bitter frustration. "I'm supposed to be the Vanguard's spear. But a simple rockfall cut me off, and you almost died because I wasn't fast enough."
Kaelen watched him. In the grand daastaan of Aethelgard, this was a textbook character-building moment for the protagonist. Guilt was the fuel the Archivists used to push heroes past their limits.
"Garrick, stop," Elara said firmly, packing away her medical supplies. "We survived. That's what matters. You cleared the rockfall in record time."
"It shouldn't have happened at all," Garrick shot back, turning to face them. The miniature sun hovering over his palm flared dangerously. "From now on, I take the point. No one walks ahead of me. No one takes a hit for me. Understood?"
Kaelen nodded slowly. "Understood."
Garrick exhaled a long breath, the tension leaving his shoulders. He walked over, clapping a heavy, warm hand onto Kaelen's uninjured shoulder. "Get some sleep, brother. I'll take the first watch. Nothing else touches you in this dark. I swear it."
As Garrick moved back to the entrance to keep guard, Elara curled up on a bedroll nearby, her exhaustion from using high-tier healing magic pulling her into a deep sleep almost instantly.
Kaelen remained awake, staring at the uneven stone ceiling.
Show me the margins, he commanded in his mind.
With a soft, chiming sound only he could hear, the translucent blue interface materialized in the air above him.
[ANOMALY STATUS]
Name: Kaelen Vane
Current Trait: The Editor's Pen (Level 1)
[SYSTEM WARNING]
Physical Vessel Status: Critical Strain.
Diagnosis: The Anomaly's mortal hardware cannot safely process the heavy Aetheric Ink required for direct reality-editing.
Recommendation: Cease use of 'Typo' on physical matter exceeding 50 pounds, or risk complete cerebral hemorrhage.
Kaelen's silver eyes narrowed as he read the glowing text.
Writer's block, he thought grimly.
He had the power to rewrite the world, but his body was a cracked inkwell. If he tried to delete a boss monster directly, or even snap a larger piece of the environment, his brain would simply melt out of his ears. The physical cost was too high. He couldn't be a frontline fighter.
He glanced at Garrick, standing guard like a golden statue, and then at Elara, sleeping peacefully.
I'm looking at this all wrong, Kaelen realized, the cold, analytical gears of his past life locking into place. An editor doesn't fight the characters in the book. An editor empowers the protagonist and nerfs the antagonists from behind the desk.
He didn't need to kill the beasts himself. He just needed to use his Typo ability to silently weaken enemy armor, or subtly alter the trajectory of Garrick's strikes so they always hit weak points. He could use Glimpse not to dodge, but to whisper tactical commands to his team a split-second before the enemy moved.
He would be the ghost in the machine. The unseen author of their victories.
Kaelen closed the interface, the blue light dissolving into the shadows. The migraine was finally beginning to recede. He closed his eyes, a dangerous, calculating smirk playing on his lips in the dark.
Alright, Archivists. Let's see how your dungeon handles a rigged party.