The stone with the broken Ouroboros felt cold and heavy in my palm. Corbin's words echoed in the silence of the cave. The Fulcrum will send an Edictor. They will unmake your very history.
I looked from the old man's grim face to the desperate, determined faces of the other Unwritten. Elara, her hand resting on the hilt of her knife. Alaric, his eyes gleaming with a scholar's fervor. They were all risking everything for a sliver of hope. For me.
"Where do we start?" I asked, my voice steady.
Corbin's grim expression didn't change, but a flicker of approval shone in his eyes.
"We start by making you more than just a boy who breaks things. We start by forging the White Wraith."
The next few weeks were a brutal education in survival and subversion. My training with Corbin was less about magic and more about perception.
"You see the Laws now, good," he'd grunt as we navigated a forest path. "But can you see the absence of Law? That clearing ahead—why do the animals avoid it?"
I focused, pushing my new sight. I couldn't see a Law, but I could see a faint, shimmering residue, a scar on reality. "Something was nullified there. Recently. It… frightens them."
"Good," Corbin said. "An Edictor passed through. Their presence alone can scorch the land. You need to feel that emptiness like a cold spot in a room. It will warn you."
I learned to move like Elara, silent and unseen, not through magic, but through skill. She taught me how to read the land, to use the shadows cast by the Law of Light Refraction, and to feel the vibrations in the ground from patrols bound by the Law of the Marching Beat.
Alaric, the former scribe, became my most valuable teacher. He couldn't show me how to nullify, but he could teach me the theory behind the prison's walls.
"The Law of Town Perimeter you broke wasn't one law, but a composite," he explained, sketching in the dirt. "A Law of Exclusion woven with a Law of Alarm. You saw the keyhole because you instinctively understood its components. You need to learn to see that before you act. You must learn the grammar of their power to write your own sentences of silence."
I learned the ranks of our enemies: Regulators, Quillords, Lexicons, Scribes. I learned the name of the one who held the knife to the world's throat: The Fulcrum. And I learned the name of the god I supposedly served: The Unwritten, the Mother of Chaos.
It was during a driving rainstorm, huddled under a rocky overhang, that the final piece of my new identity clicked into place. We were watching a squad of Quillords march along a distant road, their arrogance visible even from a mile away.
"They hunt a ghost," I said, my voice low. "But a ghost is just a story. It can't fight back. It can't make them afraid."
Elara looked at me, rainwater plastering her red hair to her face. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying the White Wraith needs to be more than a story." I looked at my hands, then out at the Quillords. "He can't just fix looms and break wells. He has to become a legend. A name that makes Quillords check over their shoulders. A threat that the Lexicons cannot categorize."
Corbin studied me. "And how does a legend begin?"
"With an act they cannot ignore," I said, a plan forming in my mind. "Not an act of healing, but of humiliation. We need to show everyone that their invincible enforcers are just men in fancy robes."
The target was a Quillord named Valerius—not the Lexicon, but the one who had tormented Oakhaven. Intel placed her in Crossroad Keep, grown fat and powerful on her "success."
The plan was simple, elegant, and terrifying. We wouldn't attack her. We wouldn't nullify her guards. We would use their own power against them.
The night of the act, I stood at the edge of the keep's town, the rain masking my presence. My hair was a stark white banner I no longer hid. A half-mask of darkened leather covered the lower half of my face. I was no longer Alex, the carpenter's son. I was a weapon.
I slipped into the keep, my nullification a subtle tool. I didn't break the Laws of Locking on the gates; I gently loosened them, creating a path only I could see. I found the central chamber where Valerius was levying her cruel "Aetheric Stability Tithe."
I didn't look at the people. I looked at the grand, golden weave of the Law of Asset Appraisal she had cast over the town. I saw its perfect, hypocritical flaw—the thread that exempted her and her wealth.
And I didn't break it.
I reached out with my will and re-knit it. I stitched the exemption thread directly back into the main law, forcing the spell to turn on its master.
The result was chaos. Gold and jewels flew from her shattered vault, raining down on the very people she had robbed. The look of utter, complete humiliation on her face was more satisfying than any victory.
As I melted back into the cheering, stunned crowd, I heard the name, born not from gratitude, but from awe and fear.
"Did you see? It was the White Wraith!"
Back at the safe-house, Corbin handed me a damp, sealed scroll. "A message. From the capital."
I broke the seal. It was from the Lexicon. The handwriting was unmistakably his.
"The specimen has graduated. The experiment enters its most critical phase. Observation continues."
He wasn't scared. He was… intrigued. I had just proven his hypothesis—that I was a growing, learning anomaly. And now, he was ready for the next stage of his experiment.
I looked at Corbin. "He's not going to send an Edictor. Not yet."
Corbin frowned. "What makes you say that?"
"He wants to see what I do next. He wants to see how I learn." I crumpled the note. "So, let's give him a show. It's time I got a proper education."
The path was clear. The White Wraith had drawn blood. Now, he needed to learn the anatomy of the beast he was hunting. He needed to walk into the heart of the enemy's knowledge.
He needed to go to the Scholarium.