The Marginalia rose from the seams of the Garden.
They were not soldiers.
They were not spirits.
They were disclaimers made flesh—annotations from stories that had been scribbled in haste, scratched out by trembling hands, and cast into the gutters of narrative discipline.
They walked with lopsided limbs, half-made features, paragraphs where bones should be. And yet, their voices were clear.
One spoke with the cadence of an unreliable narrator.
Another shouted in a voice of first-person regret.
A third simply whispered, "We were never wrong. Just unproven."
The Editor lifted a hand.
Red ink surged.
A column of script thundered down from the heavens, seeking to bracket the Marginalia—to contain them.
Aiden stepped forward, slashing upward with the Sword of Becoming.
It cut not the text—
—but the expectation.
The column shattered.
The sky trembled.
And the Editor turned.
For the first time, it hesitated.
