(This is an extra chapter to start understanding the story well)
(I hope u enjoy it )
There was once a Gate that opened inside a child's breath.
It did not roar, or shimmer, or split the sky with angelic fire. It simply appeared—like a misprint in the air, like a hesitation in the fabric of now. The villagers called it a fracture. The scholars called it a glitch. The Bridge called it an opportunity. And the child who survived it would later call it a question that refused to end.
That Gate was sealed. But its echo remains—like a comma at the end of a scream.
Mechanics of the Fracture
Gates are not doors. There are consequences.
Each one is a wound in the world, a rupture where causality forgets itself. No two look alike. Some drip upside-down rain. Others hum with ancient syntax. One was found inside the pupil of a still-living deer.
They are not summoned. They are permitted.
And when they appear, something must answer. Enter: the Tags.
Tag Theory (The Eight Permissions)
No one awakens a Tag. A Tag awakens you.
These are not powers in the traditional sense. They are narrative functions, the verbs reality assigns to those who touch its margins.
Scribe: Rewrites micro-laws within limited radius. A Scribe once altered the definition of "gravity" for eleven seconds. The battlefield still floats.
Veiler: Obscures or redacts visibility, thought, or motion. A Veiler was once hired to erase a memory from a hundred minds. They erased themselves instead.
Warden: Anchors structure—of matter, time, and intention. In a burning palace, a Warden whispered, "Hold," and the roof did not fall.
Fracturer: Breaks coherence between concepts. A Fracturer once split "loyalty" from a commander's heart.
Binder: Mends form to pattern, seals meaning into objects. One rebuilt an entire monastery from its ash using a child's lullaby.
Inker: Infects systems with uncertainty. "An Inker touched a city once," they say, "and madness bloomed like footnotes."
Mimic: Reflects, steals, or mirrors Tags. A Mimic once watched a girl die, then wore her abilities like skin for three days.
Sunderer: Tears soul from role. A Sunderer stood before a king and asked, "Are you sure you were born to rule?" Then he wasn't.
Most only hold one Tag.
Rayon Altiron holds one. But the world has never agreed on which.
The Academy & The Bridge
Two institutions shape the war against the Gates.
The Academy is where hunters are trained—formally, brutally, poetically. Here, glyphs are memorized like scripture, and obedience is inked deeper than instinct. Cadets learn to kneel before their Tag before they are allowed to wield it.
The Bridge, however, is not a school. It is a contract.
A network of Archivists, Guilders, and Negotiators who assign missions, monitor fractures, and oversee the containment of narrative risk. They do not believe in heroes. They believe in edits.
The Academy teaches you to serve the text.The Bridge pays you to alter it.
Neither quite knows what to do with Rayon.
On Governance and Control
The ruling body is not visible. Not directly.
They call themselves the Council of the First Margin, and they do not govern with armies. They govern with definitions.
They are the ones who codified what Gates are. What Tags can do. Who counts as real. What counts as a wound.
They sit behind glyph-lit walls, speaking in annotations and sending corrections into the world.
And yet, even they fear what is coming.
Because someone has begun rewriting the footnotes.
Rayon Altiron (Unverified Annotation)
A cadet who refused the Exegesis Trial.A hunter who broke contract mid-seal.A boy whose brother once bled from the eyes of a Gate.
Rayon is not a rebel. He is a reader who no longer trusts the book.
Where others seek power, he seeks permission.Where others see the world as a stage, he sees it as a manuscript—badly edited, tragically beautiful, and unfinished.
He does not want to save the world. He wants to correct it.Not with fire. Not with glory.
With understanding.With punctuation.
A Child, A Gate, A Sentence Unfinished
The girl in the cage—Correction herself—did not scream when rescued.
She blinked. Once. Then said, "I remember you."
Rayon did not answer.
He only looked at the contract meant to bind her—a blood-scrawled loop with his name printed without consent—and burned it until the ink turned to ash.
Somewhere, far away, a member of the Council trembled.
Final Margin
The Gates are not multiplying. They are returning.
Every fracture is a forgotten line. Every hunter is a would-be editor. Every child who walks too close to the wrong kind of silence risks awakening as a question the world cannot answer.
And somewhere beyond the Archive, beyond the Academy, beyond the authorized annotations of the Council, Rayon walks with one hand open and the other closed around a mystery:
Who wrote the first Gate?And why did they stop?
He walks between meaning and aftermath.
And he is not finished.
Not yet.
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