Her name was Elin Rourke.
Not famous. Not flamboyant. But once Kael's chief ideologue—responsible for organizing Caelum's surviving texts, cataloging variant editions of the Quiet Creed, and designing the linguistic framework of the Purity Codex.
She helped distill power into prose.
Then she vanished.
Sera Vex found her in a burned-out library north of Vale's reach, reconstructing lost essays from scorched fragments. Elin didn't greet her. She simply placed a page on the table:
"Caelum Dross once wrote that truth should bruise gently. Kael edited that to: 'Truth should bind clearly.' Look at the glyphwork. Same page. Different fire."
Sera examined it. Elin had annotated every phrase Kael modified—red ink slashed like wounds beside each alteration. She had compiled forty-seven distortions—enough to unravel the entire Purity Codex.
"I designed the architecture," Elin whispered. "Because Kael convinced me clarity was kindness. But I watched how every edit removed doubt. Removed nuance. Removed... him."
Sera breathed deep. "Why come to you now?"
Elin stared into flickering lantern light.
"Because myth reconstructed becomes weapon. And Kael doesn't want memory—he wants obedience dressed in legacy."
She handed Sera a bound dossier: The Divergence Index.
Inside: cross-referenced quotes, glyph history, testimonial contradictions, Caelum's original margin notes, and even one recorded spell where his voice trembles while questioning his own authority.
Sera held it like flame held in parchment.
"This could expose everything," she said.
"It won't stop Kael," Elin replied. "But it will fracture belief."
Outside, the wind carried songs from children who didn't know doctrine—only echo.
Sera left with the Index.
And somewhere in the Purity halls, Kael gave a speech about legacy—but a sigil carved behind him flickered.
Wrong glyph.
Wrong meaning.
And one historian smiled bitterly in a forgotten ruin.