Chapter 31 – The Editing Room
The order was insane.
In the middle of a slaughter, their Warlord was telling them to make music.
But Kaelen heard it.
Pinned to the wall, bleeding black ink, the Void Knight understood. He saw the Eclipse standing over him, her serrated dagger raised to deliver the final edit.
Kaelen didn't struggle against the pin.
He inhaled.
And he roared.
It wasn't a battle cry. It was a low-frequency thrum that came from the stomach of a Titan.
HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM.
The sound wave hit the stone wall behind him.
The wall vibrated.
The shadow that pinned Kaelen's arm began to shake. It lost its sharp edge. It became fuzzy.
The physical spike holding him turned into smoke.
Kaelen ripped his arm free, black blood spraying.
"BEAT!" Kaelen bellowed to his Legion.
Three hundred Barbarians understood.
They stopped swinging at the shadows.
They slammed their Dead Iron clubs against their shields.
They stomped their massive boots on the frozen ground.
BOOM. CLANG.
BOOM. CLANG.
The rhythm wasn't random. It was the ancient heartbeat of the North.
The sound waves bounced off the concave cliffs of the Weeping Pass, amplifying with every strike.
The air began to ripple. The water of the falls misted into vapor.
The Eclipse screamed.
"STOP IT!"
She tried to slash Ronnie.
But as she swung her dagger, the sound wave hit her.
Her 2D form vibrated violently. The sharp edge of her blade blurred into a cloud of gray static.
When it hit Ronnie's leather armor, it didn't cut. It felt like a soft bruise.
"She's losing definition!" Ronnie realized, grinning savagely. "She's getting blurry!"
Uzo stepped forward.
The noise was earth-shattering. The sheer acoustic pressure was making his teeth ache.
The world was shaking. The "canvas" of reality was vibrating too fast for the "ink" of the shadow to stick.
The army of shadow-monsters dissolved into harmless gray sludge.
Only the Eclipse remained, thrashing in the center of the valley, trying to hold her form together. She looked like a sketch being erased by a frantic hand.
"You are a Draft," Uzo said, walking toward her. The Lexicon was open in his hand. The pages were fluttering wildly in the acoustic wind. "And a Draft cannot survive the review."
The Eclipse looked at him with hateful, blurry eyes.
"The King... will... erase... you..."
"The King writes in Ink," Uzo shouted over the drums. "I write in Noise."
He reached out.
He didn't use a spell.
He used the Null-Ink in his own veins.
He grabbed the Eclipse.
Because she was vibrating, she was no longer 2D. She had been forced into a chaotic, semi-physical state.
She felt like cold slime.
"DELETE."
Uzo slammed his hand into her chest.
The Redaction poured out of him.
It didn't cut her shadow. It infected her script.
The black bandages turned gray. Then white. Then transparent.
The Eclipse shrieked a digital, glitching sound that pitched up until it shattered the ice on the riverbanks.
CRACK.
She exploded.
Not into blood. Not into smoke.
She exploded into Letters.
Thousands of black letters; A, K, S, Z—scattered into the air like confetti.
Then, they dissolved into nothingness.
The drums stopped.
The silence that rushed back into the valley was heavier than the noise.
Kaelen fell to his knees, clutching his arm.
The Mute warriors looked around, panting. The shadows were gone. The sun was just the sun again.
Uzo stood in the center of the crater.
A single piece of paper floated down from where the Eclipse had been.
He caught it.
It was the page Kaelen had seen earlier, but the text had changed.
It no longer said Project Eclipse.
The text was now crossed out with a thick, gray line.
[REDACTED]
Uzo slumped, the adrenaline crashing. His legs gave out, and he sat hard on the wet stone.
"That," Uzo gasped, wiping blood from his nose, "was a difficult edit."
Ronnie walked over. She looked at the crater, then at the vibrating walls of the canyon.
"You realized that Shadows need a steady hand," she said, impressed. "You shook the table while she was trying to draw."
"Something like that," Uzo wheezed.
He opened the Lexicon.
The chaotic, bubbling ink from earlier had finally calmed down.
It dried instantly, turning into a crisp, authoritative font, like a history book recording a major event.
New Entry Cataloged:
Resonance (noun)
Definition: The act of vibrating a canvas to blur the ink.
Application: Disrupts 2-Dimensional constructs.
Cost: High. (Warning: Frequent use may result in permanent Auditory Redaction deafness).
Uzo traced the words. He hadn't "unlocked a skill." He had defined a new law of physics.
He closed the book.
He looked at Kaelen, who was slowly standing up, his white eyes glowing with pride.
The Barbarians raised their weapons.
They didn't cheer.
They slammed their shields once. A single, unified note of respect.
They had found their rhythm again.