A rebellion didn't begin with a sword.
It began with a sentence.
And Kael was finally ready to speak it.
The Quiet Before
They met in the annex at twilight — Kael, Eli, Rowan, Althea, and six others whose names had once been footnotes in the margins of Everfall's grand tale.
Misfits. Mistakes. Forgotten fragments.
Now, co-authors of what came next.
Kael placed the page — now fully inscribed with his vow — at the center of the table. Around it, the blank pages they each carried began to stir. Words, once unstable and flickering, now took root in ink.
"We won't overwrite the world," Kael said. "We'll reclaim it, line by line."
Althea nodded. "But to do that, we'll need more than pages and promises. We need to awaken the others."
Rowan leaned forward. "And protect them. The Editor King won't sit idle."
The Editor's First Strike
They didn't wait long.
Just before dawn, the sky split with silver glyphs — lines of forced revision.
One of their allies, Mara, screamed as a searing mark was burned across her wrist.
Her name began to fade.
Kael caught her hand. "No! Stay with me!"
He took her blank page and pressed it against his own.
Their stories merged — light flared, defiance written in fire.
Mara gasped.
Her name snapped back into existence.
And Kael felt it — the Editor King's gaze.
Cold. Calculating.
Now watching every move.
The Reclaiming Begins
They split into cells, spreading through the Academy and beyond.
Kael's team liberated the Room of Drafted Silence, where altered students were held in narrative stasis — perfect memories overwritten with false purpose.
Eli led an incursion into the Scriptor's Spire, planting rewritten glyphs that unlocked suppressed backstories.
And Althea?
She sent coded messages through enchanted tomes, awakening forgotten characters embedded across the realm — side characters, discarded mentors, fallen rivals — all of them awakening with the knowledge that their stories had been stolen.
The People's Voice
The real turning point came during a council address in the Hall of Concord, when the High Chronicler rose to deliver the King's newest decree.
But the decree had been rewritten.
By someone inside.
Instead of a speech of suppression, the Chronicler began reading aloud Kael's words:
"The story belongs to all of us. Not just the chosen. Not just the written. But the forgotten, the altered, the erased."
"We are the pages the King feared."
"And now… we write back."
The hall erupted.
Magic flared. Pages burst with fire and ink. And in the distance, the sky began to shake.
Because for the first time—
The narrative was fighting back.