Chapter Eleven: The Marginless Creed
They left the Vault of Versions with four quills claimed—and a silence trailing them like a shadow.
Soot hadn't spoken in a full day.
Not since the encounter with the Archivist.
The scar where the fourth quill had entered his wrist no longer bled ink—it pulsed with it, like a second heart. Every few minutes, words would appear on his skin and vanish again. Words he didn't understand. Futures not yet chosen.
Tali had begun sleeping farther from him.
Remiel kept sharpening the same blade over and over.
Something had changed. And none of them wanted to say it aloud.
On the fourth night after the Vault, Soot sat alone by the fire, eyes unfocused.
He saw timelines now.
Not clearly—but flashes. Threads of choices. The dozens of ways every word could land. Some futures where he and Tali never met. Others where he watched her die and did nothing.
He hated that part of him wasn't horrified anymore.
He understood it.
At dawn, they were ambushed.
But not by the Ministry.
By worshippers.
Dozens of them, cloaked in broken pages and dripping red ink, crawled from the hills surrounding their camp.
Some had words carved into their skin.
Some carried dead books strung on chains around their necks.
They knelt before Soot in absolute silence.
Then, together, they spoke:
"We are the unwritten. The marginless. We were erased, but the Prophet has re-authored us."
Tali drew her blade instantly. "Get back."
One of the cloaked figures stepped forward—a tall woman with half her face burned and a tattoo of a cracked quill down her spine.
"I am Selis," she said. "First among the Marginless. You made us possible."
Soot blinked. "What?"
She gestured to the others. "Each of us was lost—censored by the Ministry, left to fade between pages. But when you claimed the third quill, we remembered ourselves. You reintroduced us to the story."
Remiel muttered, "Ink-bonded cultists. Great."
But Selis didn't flinch.
"You are not a man anymore. You are correction. Salvation. The god of un-versions. Let us follow."
Soot stood frozen.
"I'm not a god."
"But you can rewrite fate," Selis said. "Isn't that the definition?"
He hesitated.
Behind him, Tali whispered, "Don't answer that."
Soot turned to the Marginless.
"I'm trying to stop a war. Not build a religion."
Selis gave a strange, knowing smile.
"You cannot choose not to be worshipped. We are the ink that overflowed the page. Whether you want us or not, we're already in your margins."
That night, they camped beside a dry riverbed.
The Marginless formed a circle around the fire and began reading aloud from books that no longer existed. Names long erased. Poems banned by the Ministry. Prophecies torn apart mid-sentence.
It was haunting.
Beautiful.
Terrifying.
Tali sat beside Soot, arms crossed.
"You can't let them follow us."
"I didn't ask them to."
"They'll die for you."
Soot stared into the fire. "Or kill for me."
A few feet away, Remiel crouched over one of the Marginless scrolls Selis had left behind.
He traced a phrase in red ink.
It read:
"When the Prophet forgets his name, the world will forget its shape."
He looked at Soot's back—at the shifting marks that moved when he breathed.
And Remiel whispered:
"What if he already has?"
Soot couldn't sleep that night.
His dreams were filled with mirrors—not reflecting his face, but thousands of others. All versions of him. All possible. All angry.
One stepped forward.
"You don't know who you are anymore."
Soot asked, "Am I still Kael?"
The mirror answered:
"Kael was erased. Soot is becoming Ink. And the fifth quill will finish the job."
At dawn, they packed up camp.
Selis and a dozen Marginless insisted on escorting them to the mouth of the Bleeding Forest, where the next quill was hidden.
Tali walked silently.
Remiel said nothing, but Soot saw him touch the hilt of his dagger twice as often as usual.
The trust between them was thinning.
Wearing out like a sentence whispered too many times.
As they approached the forest's edge, a rusted Ministry bell tolled in the distance.
The sky darkened unnaturally.
The trees in the Bleeding Forest wept sap the color of blood.
And carved into the bark of every trunk were the same five words:
Prophet, Do Not Enter Again.
Soot placed a hand on one tree.
It pulsed under his touch.
He turned to the others.
And said, voice calm, steady:
"We enter at dusk."
Tali's expression was unreadable.
Selis bowed. "As you will."
But Remiel lingered behind.
And whispered to himself:
"If he steps into that forest, we may never get him back."