The circle of students tightened around Lucien with a silence that screamed louder than any roar. Their faces were smooth and beautiful, scrubbed clean of the terror that had once defined them in the dungeons. Each one held a glowing silver pen like a sacred relic, the tips dripping with a golden fluid that looked like liquid sunlight.
"Put down the glass quill Lucien," the students spoke in a terrifying, unified melody. The sound didn't come from their throats; it vibrated out of their skin. "The old ink was too heavy with grief. We are here to make the margins clean. We are here to finalize the edit."
"Stay back!" Selene yelled. She raised her broken daggers, but the metal had lost its edge, turning dull and opaque in the presence of so many revisions. "Nyra! They aren't using mana! T
