The silence that followed the Mannequin's implosion was more terrifying than the battle. In the deep trench of the East, the air was now a thick, violet fog of "Stained Reality." Clevatess stood amidst the lint-snow, his indigo core pulsing rhythmically in the empty space where his right arm once was. He wasn't bleeding blood; he was leaking potential.
"The void is spreading," the Architect warned, his own form flickering as he hovered near the King. "That 'Stain' on the floor is a hunger, Clevatess. It's trying to finish what the Null-Cloth started. It wants to pull the rest of you into the gap."
"I am not done being told," Clevatess gritted out, though his knees buckled.
High above in the Spire, Alicia acted with a feverish intensity. She didn't reach for her raven-bone pen. She reached for the **Shadow-Silk** she had been saving since the Grave-Sea—the thread she had hidden in her own author's mantle, the secret ink of the **Phantom Quill**.
"If the Queen wants to delete him, I'll make him a ghost she can't touch," Alicia whispered.
She began to draw in the air, her fingers moving in a blur of fashion-designer precision. She wasn't just sketching; she was "Drafting" a new anatomy. She took the violet smoke from the rift, the silver remnants of the Needle-Whales, and the indigo echoes of the King's own heart.
"Nelluru! Guide the thread!"
Nelluru plunged her lime-green blade into the resonance valve, sending a stabilizing current down to the trench. Alicia hurled her "Draft" downward—a shimmering, skeletal arm made of translucent shadow-silk and violet lightning.
The graft hit Clevatess's shoulder.
The King let out a sound that was half-scream, half-song. The shadow-silk didn't just attach; it wove itself into his nervous system. The "Stain" on the floor was sucked upward, fueling the transformation. The new arm wasn't obsidian; it was a shifting, ethereal limb that flickered between existence and memory. It looked like a sketch brought to life—a **Phantom Limb**.
Clevatess flexed the fingers. They moved with a speed that defied physics, leaving violet trails in the air.
"It feels... light," the King remarked, his voice now carrying a strange, paper-thin resonance.
"It's a Phantom Graft," Alicia called out, her voice echoing through the Sky-Fray. "It doesn't have weight because it doesn't have a past. It's a limb made of the 'Next Page.' Use it to pull us out of this graveyard!"