The White Wraith was no longer a folktale. He was a weapon. The story of the truth-compelling Quillord who vomited and sang nursery rhymes spread through the region like wildfire, bringing hesitant smiles to the oppressed and cold fury to the halls of power.
Corbin regarded Alex with a new, grim respect. "You understand finesse. Now you must understand spectacle. We must show the people that the Law is not unassailable. We must break one of its icons."
The icon chosen was Lord Valerius.
The Quillord who had sprung the Lexicon's trap in Oakhaven had not been punished for her failure. She had been promoted, given command of the regional garrison at Crossroad Keep as a reward for her "successful identification of the anomaly." Her new role was to hunt the White Wraith, and she pursued it with the fervor of the fanatically devout.
"She's instituted a new tax," Corbin explained, unrolling a crude map of the keep and its town. "The 'Aetheric Stability Tithe.' She's using a grand Law of Asset Appraisal to magically assess every home, every business, and seizing a portion of their wealth and property, claiming it's to fund the hunt for you. She is starving the people to catch their ghost."
Alex felt the old, familiar anger, but it was colder now, a sharp and focused thing. "What's the plan?"
"Her Law of Asset Appraisal is the key," the former scribe of the Unwritten, a man named Alaric, interjected. "It is a complex, self-referential spell. It draws its authority from the office of the Quillord, but it also feeds that authority, making her stronger within her domain. It is a perfect, closed loop. Or so she believes."
Alaric pointed to a complex diagram he'd drawn. "The loop has one vulnerability. It must, by its own legal nature, also apply to the Quillord herself. Her wealth, her power, is part of the 'assets' of the region. But she has exempted herself. That exemption is a logical flaw. A crack."
The plan was not to nullify the law. The plan was to enforce it.
Days later, on the day of the tithe's collection, the main square of Crossroad Keep was thick with despair. Families watched as Regulators, guided by the shimmering Law of Asset Appraisal, marked their doors and led away their livestock. On a raised platform, Lord Valerius stood, resplendent in her Quillord robes, a living embodiment of the system's power.
Alex, the White Wraith, did not slink through shadows. He walked into the square.
A gasp rippled through the crowd, followed by a silence so profound the clinking of a single coin would have sounded like a thunderclap. His white hair was a banner. His half-mask a promise. He stopped in the very center of the square, directly in Valerius's line of sight.
Her eyes widened, then narrowed with vindictive triumph. "The anomaly reveals itself! Seize him!"
"There will be no seizure today, Lord Valerius," Alex's voice rang out, clear and steady, amplified by a subtle nullification of the Law of Muffled Sound around him. "Today, we simply ensure the law is applied justly. All assets in the region are to be appraised. Is that not correct?"
He didn't wait for her answer. He turned his gaze not to her, but to the air around her. He could see it—the grand, golden weave of the Law of Asset Appraisal, a beautiful and greedy thing. And he could see the single, hypocritical thread, the one that looped around her and her keep, declaring them exempt.
He reached out with his will, not to break the thread, but to re-knit it.
With a surge of power that made the air hum, he stitched the exemption thread directly back into the main law. He forced the loop to close, to include its creator.
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.
The shimmering golden light of the appraisal spell, which had been clinging to the homes of the poor, suddenly flared with blinding intensity around Lord Valerius herself. It then shot like a lightning bolt towards the vault of Crossroad Keep.
There was a deafening CRACK as the vault's magically reinforced door splintered. The spell, now dutifully assessing the Quillord's own "assets," began to enforce its own terms. Coins, jewels, and ingots of gold flew from the shattered vault, soaring through the air in a glittering stream before raining down into the stunned crowd.
Valerius stood frozen, a statue of horror, as the very law she had created stripped her of her wealth and scattered it to the people she had robbed.
The square erupted. Not into a riot, but into a frenzy of stunned, joyous reclamation.
Alex didn't look at the gold. He kept his eyes locked on Valerius. He took a single step forward, his voice dropping, yet carrying to her alone.
"The law is absolute, is it not?"
Her composure shattered. With a shriek of pure, undiluted rage, she raised her Quillord's rod, not to cast a law, but to strike him down physically. But the authority was gone. The power had fled. She was just a furious woman in fancy robes.
The White Wraith turned his back on her, a gesture of ultimate contempt, and walked into the cheering crowd, which parted for him and then closed around him, swallowing their ghost once more.
He had not just robbed her. He had humiliated the very concept of her authority. The icon was broken.
From a high window overlooking the square, the Lexicon from Oakhaven watched, his expression unreadable. He made a single, precise note in his tome.
"Subject has progressed from negation to subversion. The anomaly is learning. The Fulcrum must be informed."
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