The Keeper, witnessing the transformation alongside her, knelt slowly before her, its ancient composure carrying a reverence Liora had rarely seen it display.
"The Seventh Path has found its guardian," it said quietly.
Far from the Vault, the Redactor made a decision he had been building toward since his conversation with the Reflection, since his long, difficult reckoning with the true cost of everything his careful revisions had erased. He gathered his authority and, for the first time in the whole of his long service, turned it directly against the command he had just been given.
He rejected the Final Revision.
He sent word immediately to every Margin Keeper still operating under his direction, ordering them to stand down, to cease their work of careful, patient optimization, to allow history to unfold according to its own honest, unedited logic rather than continuing to smooth away its rougher edges.
