The Regulator moved with the efficiency of a scalpel.
He didn't run; he simply occupied the space where Kian was about to be. Every strike was a calculation, every movement a derivation of the Record's laws.
To the Regulator, Kian was not a human; he was a "Logical Error" that needed to be deleted from the equation.
"Your existence is a paradox," the Regulator murmured, his voice a cold, synthesized harmony. "You are a breath that was never inhaled. You are a shadow without a source. By the authority of the Architect, I excise you."
Kian dodged a strike of pure kinetic energy that shattered the marble tiles behind him. He wasn't using strength; he was using Entropy.
He understood that the Regulator was bound by the Record—he could only move in ways that were "Safe."
Kian, The Unwritten, had no such limitations. He moved with a jagged, ugly unpredictability that the machine-mind could not categorize.
"You can't calculate a scream, can you?" Kian taunted, sliding beneath a sweeping blow.
"You can't find the square root of a heartbreak!"
"You're just a puppet dancing on a string of 'Inevitable'!"
From the shadows of the pillars, Sion Valeska emerged.
He wasn't fighting with his fists; he was fighting with his Burden.
He knelt on the ground, his hands pressed against the cold stone, and began to "Broadcast." He didn't send out a signal; he sent out a Feeling.
The suppressed grief of the city, the hidden loneliness of the sixty thousand, and the silent agony of a world without a future flooded into the Plaza.
It was a psychological tidal wave. * The citizens began to tremble.
• The "Vitreous Stare" cracked.
• People began to weep without knowing why.
The Regulator faltered. His chrome mask flickered.
His internal processors were being overwhelmed by "Unscheduled Emotion."
"Noise... too much noise..." the Regulator hissed, his movements becoming jerky and erratic.
[The Record... is being... corrupted...]
"It's not noise, you machine!" Kian roared, leaping onto the Regulator's shoulders and slamming the jagged iron stone into the center of the chrome mask.
"It's the Pulse! And it's louder than your silence!"
The Regulator collapsed.
His body dissolved into a puddle of grey, inert ink.
The Plaza was silent, but it was a different kind of silence. It was the silence of a crowd that had just realized they were standing in a cage.