Kael Verne learned something important while being restrained by reality itself.
It hurt less when he stopped fighting.
The sigils binding his limbs were not physical chains. They were assertions—statements written into the air declaring that he was contained, classified, owned. Every time he struggled, the bindings rewrote themselves tighter, as if correcting an error in posture.
So Kael breathed.
Rainwater dripped from his hair into his eyes as the alley dissolved around him, overwritten by a sterile corridor of white stone and suspended light. There was no sensation of movement—no acceleration, no spatial shift—only the sudden certainty that the alley no longer existed.
A Forced Revision.
Teleportation was too crude a word. This was relocation by editorial authority.
The woman who had spoken first stood a few paces ahead of him, walking calmly as though Kael weren't bound mid-air behind her like an afterthought. Her coat bore no insignia, but the cut was unmistakable—Archivum Authority standard. Utility over aesthetics. Authority without ornamentation.
"Try not to lose anything else," she said without turning. "You've already hemorrhaged enough Margins tonight."
Kael swallowed.
"Funny," he muttered. "Most people bleed from the inside and don't get commentary."
She stopped.
Slowly, deliberately, she turned to face him.
Her eyes were not cruel. That unsettled him more than hostility would have.
"My name is Iria Vale," she said. "Senior Redactor, Third Vault. I'll be conducting your preliminary evaluation."
She raised a finger.
"And before you speak—no, you are not being arrested. You are being stabilized. Arrest implies legality. You no longer qualify."
Kael laughed again, but it came out hoarse.
"Good to know I've been upgraded."
The White Vault
The corridor opened into a circular chamber the size of a cathedral, its ceiling vanishing into layered concentric rings of light. The walls were etched with faint glyphs that pulsed like a slow heartbeat—records in active stasis.
Kael felt them.
Thousands of them.
Lives.
Some dormant. Some screaming quietly.
The air smelled faintly of ozone and old paper.
This was a Vault—a physical anchor point where the Grave Circuit intersected directly with the material world. Only the Archivum Authority possessed the resources and arrogance to build such structures.
Kael was lowered into a chair grown seamlessly from the floor, its surface cold and yielding. The bindings reconfigured, pinning his wrists and ankles, but leaving his torso free.
Iria took a seat across from him. A desk unfolded between them, composed of translucent panels layered with flowing text that Kael couldn't fully parse.
"Your heart rate is elevated," she noted. "Normal. Fear response is expected."
"I'm not afraid," Kael said.
She looked at him, one eyebrow lifting a fraction.
"You're afraid of forgetting," she corrected. "Which is worse."
The words hit closer than he liked.
What the Archivum Knows
"Kael Verne," Iria began, her voice calm, professional. "Declared deceased three years, two months, and eleven days ago. Cause: incineration during a residential infrastructure failure. Record closed."
She tapped the air.
"Two days later, an anomaly surfaced in the lower drainage systems beneath Virellion. Subject emerged alive. No corresponding revision logged. No resurrection protocol triggered."
Kael clenched his jaw.
"Been over this already," he said. "I don't know how I survived."
"That's not what concerns us," Iria replied.
She swiped her hand, and a projection bloomed between them—an abstract visualization of Kael's Personal Record.
It was wrong.
Where most records resembled layered timelines—branches, margins, annotations—Kael's looked like a burned manuscript. Entire sections were blacked out, edges frayed. Some entries were missing entirely. Others looped back on themselves in impossible ways.
And at the center—
A void.
"A Record Core absence," Iria said quietly. "Do you know how rare that is?"
Kael stared.
"No."
"It's never happened before."
Silence stretched.
Then: "Congratulations."
Kael's Internal Fracture
Kael felt something stir behind his eyes—not pain, not memory, but pressure. Like a word on the tip of his tongue that refused to exist.
"I don't feel special," he said. "I feel… thinner. Like someone's been scraping parts of me away."
Iria's gaze softened, just slightly.
"That's because they have."
She leaned forward.
"Kael, Editors usually access power by adding stress to their records—intensifying trauma, sharpening regret, amplifying emotion. You don't."
"You subtract," she continued. "You edit through absence."
The word echoed uncomfortably.
"Every time you revise reality," she said, "you delete something that once defined you. A fear. A guilt. A love. Eventually, there will be nothing left to remove."
Kael looked away.
"And then what?" he asked quietly.
Iria didn't answer immediately.
"When an Editor reaches zero," she said at last, "they stop being human."
A Moral Offer
The lights dimmed.
The walls of the Vault shifted, projecting a cityscape Kael recognized instantly.
His neighborhood.
Pre-explosion.
He saw himself—younger, unscarred—walking down the street with his mother beside him, laughing about something trivial. A memory he remembered remembering, but not the details.
Iria's voice cut through the illusion.
"This is a reconstruction based on residual data," she said. "Not a memory. A simulation."
Kael's throat tightened.
"You could give this back," he said.
"Yes," Iria admitted. "With enough stabilization and controlled re-integration, some fragments could be restored."
Hope flared—dangerous, bright.
"But," she continued, "only if you submit."
Kael turned to her.
"Submit to what?"
"To classification," she said. "To containment. To becoming a Controlled Asset of the Archivum Authority."
The cityscape froze.
"You would be studied," she went on. "Restricted. Used when necessary. But you would live. You would be preserved."
Kael laughed softly.
"You mean archived."
"Yes."
The word settled like dust.
The Cost of Preservation
Kael closed his eyes.
Inside his head, the Grave Circuit whispered—broken fragments of things he no longer fully remembered wanting.
He thought of the hospital hallway. Of the regret he no longer felt.
He thought of how easy it had been to erase that pain.
Too easy.
"What happens," he asked slowly, "to people you preserve too long?"
Iria didn't answer.
Kael opened his eyes.
"I'm not a file," he said. "I'm not a problem to be solved."
"You are both," Iria replied gently. "And something worse."
She stood.
"An unanswered question."
The Interruption
The Vault shuddered.
Not violently—precisely.
Alarms didn't blare. The Archivum did not rely on panic. Instead, glyphs along the walls shifted color, their rhythm accelerating.
Iria frowned.
"That's… unexpected."
"What?" Kael asked.
Before she could answer, the far wall split open, not by force, but by revision. The stone peeled away like an edited paragraph, revealing darkness threaded with red annotations.
A voice echoed through the chamber.
"Still cataloging ghosts, Iria?"
The air grew heavy.
Kael felt it immediately.
This presence wasn't an Editor.
It was something that had survived beyond editing.
The Unbound
A figure stepped through the breach—tall, draped in layered garments that seemed stitched from discarded records. Their face was obscured by a mask etched with constantly shifting text, impossible to read.
An Unbound.
Editors who had severed their connection to the Archivum—and paid the price.
Iria's hand snapped up, sigils forming instantly.
"Stand down," she commanded. "You are violating Vault Protocol."
The Unbound laughed.
A sound like pages tearing.
"Protocol," they said. "That's rich."
Their gaze turned to Kael.
"So this is the dead boy," they murmured. "You're smaller than I expected."
Kael's heart pounded.
"Do you know them?" he whispered to Iria.
"Yes," she said tightly.
"And no."
Choice Under Fire
The Unbound raised a hand.
The bindings around Kael flickered.
Not breaking—hesitating.
"You don't belong to them," the Unbound said. "You don't belong to anyone. You're a Blank Margin, Kael Verne. A chance the Circuit never intended."
Iria turned sharply.
"Don't listen to them."
The Unbound tilted their head.
"She wants to keep you intact," they said. "We want to see what happens when you break."
Kael laughed shakily.
"Those are terrible sales pitches."
The Vault began to destabilize.
Records screamed.
The Unbound extended their hand toward Kael.
"Come with us," they said. "Or stay and be preserved forever."
Kael looked at Iria.
At the calm, controlled fear behind her eyes.
Then inward—toward the empty spaces inside himself.
He felt something tug.
Not memory.
Choice.
Revision Without Regret
Kael reached inward.
Not to a memory.
To an absence.
A moment in his life where he had hesitated.
Where he had chosen safety over uncertainty.
He erased it.
The world cracked.
The bindings shattered into meaningless symbols as Kael surged forward, colliding with the Unbound and the collapsing Vault alike.
Iria shouted his name.
Kael didn't look back.
Aftermath
When the world reassembled itself, Kael lay in the ruins of an abandoned city sector, dawn bleeding pale gold across broken towers.
The Unbound stood nearby.
"Welcome to the margins," they said.
Kael stared at the sky.
He couldn't remember what he had just erased.
Only that it had mattered.
And that one day, he would run out of things to lose.