The whispers of the Codex had changed everything. The close, personal world of Aethyra—with its squabbling nobles, its fragile new government, and its suspicious allies—now felt a stage under a microscope. Every decision Felix made was haunted by the terrible understanding that he was not only building a kingdom, but performing for an unseen, cosmic audience. The pressure was crushing, a weight that threatened to bury the simple, human need to do good beneath the burden of galactic significance.
It was this pressure that drove him deeper into the Codex than ever. He did not need a power of text correction or historian shaming. He needed a statement. A force so undeniable, so rooted in the world's forgotten truth, that it would shake the foundations of any who beheld it, king or Scribe Lor
