Chapter 6:
Kael's training was brutal.
The following week was a blur of controlled, agonizing edits. Under his cold, watchful eye, Ellie learned to feel the "stability" of the world. A puddle on the ground was low stability—she could easily edit its reflection. The brick wall of the school was high stability—trying to change its color felt like slamming her mind against a mountain.
"Don't fight the current," Kael instructed as she tried to subtly alter the path of a falling leaf. "Guide it. You're a ghost in the machine, not a sledgehammer."
Her headaches became a constant companion, a dull throb that only faded after hours of rest. But she was learning. She could now change a single spoken word with only a slight wince, and nudge a small object a few inches with a sharp, manageable pain.
The real breakthrough came on the fifth day.
"You're channeling the cost through your optic nerve," Kael observed critically, watching her massage her temple after a simple edit. "It's inefficient. You'll go blind. You need to distribute it."
"How?" Ellie gasped, the pain still receding.
"Stop thinking of it as a command from your brain," he said, stepping closer. "Feel it as an energy in your chest. And when you edit, push it out through your hands, your feet. Bleed it out into the air around you."
It sounded like mystical nonsense. But the next time she edited a bird's flight path, she tried it. She focused the burning sensation not behind her eyes, but in her core, and imagined it dissipating through her skin.
The migraine that should have laid her out for an hour was gone, replaced by a full-body fatigue, like she'd just run a mile. It was still a cost, but it was sustainable.
A rare, grim nod from Kael was her only praise. "You might not get yourself killed after all."
Their sessions were always in secret, deserted places, but they couldn't avoid the real world forever. In the school cafeteria, Ellie watched the scripts play out. She saw the petty dramas, the unspoken crushes, the quiet loneliness. It was all there, laid bare in blue text. She felt a pang of her old desire to fix things, to smooth the edges, but the memory of Liam's face held her back.
It was during History class that she saw it.
Mr. Davies was droning on about the Industrial Revolution when the script above his head, usually a dry recitation of facts, flickered.
[MR. DAVIES]: "...and the invention of the steam engine fundamentally altered—"
The text glitched, the letters scrambling.
[MR. DAVIES]: "—the sky was the color of a dead channel. The static screamed. It screamed her name. El—"
Then it snapped back to normal as if nothing happened. [MR. DAVIES]: "—altered the socioeconomic landscape of Europe."
Mr. Davies paused, blinking, his face suddenly pale. "I... I seem to have lost my train of thought."
No one else noticed. But Ellie's blood ran cold. She looked across the room. Kael, who was in the same class, was already looking at her, his expression deadly serious. He gave a single, sharp nod.
The Writers weren't just fixing errors. They were probing. Testing the boundaries of their story. And they had just spoken her name.
The war wasn't coming. It had already begun