The revelation of the Broken Chronicle weighed in Felix's belly like a boulder. The news was too much, too basic to be addressed immediately. To make it public would be to pull out the keystone from an arch; the entire structure of the kingdom would fall into catastrophic debris. He needed time to think, to plan, to find a way of making the truth public without causing havoc.The rulers, however, had waited long enough. The king, his paranoia now in full swing, and the High Cantor, whose authority itself stood in peril at the hands of Felix with every move he made, regarded the scholar's moment of quiet as anything but repose. Populist affection by the wealthy and during the Festival was a weed in their garden, and it was time to burn the garden to ashes.They needed a diversion. A magnificent, unifying purpose that would redirect the wonder of the masses and the terror of the nobles into a channel they could manage. They needed an adversary.They found one in the next kingdom of Thae

Their new hideout, a cramped attic above a chandler's shop, was thick with the smell of beeswax and unspoken tension. Felix lay on the floor, back against a slanting ceiling beam, eyes closed. But he wasn't asleep. He was replaying the battle at the Stone Bridge in his mind, over and over, a gruesome loop of triumph and horror.The Codex replayed it with him, its cold, analytical Annotations providing a dispassionate post-mortem.Tactical Outcome: Optimal. Thaecian losses: 0. Strategic objective (prevention of propaganda win) achieved. Collateral Damage: 5 friendly units neutralized. Existential erasure. Cause: Overuse of Erasure protocol. Target parameters insufficiently defined.Units. The Codex had referred to the scouts units. Data points. It had treated their erasure not as a moral catastrophe, but as a statistical mistake, a rounding-down of being. Felix could still feel the metaphysical click of their unbeing, a sound that had echoed not in his ears, but in his very soul.Liora

The capital held its breath. The hunt for the "Enemy of Crowns" was now the sole preoccupation of the kingdom. Taverns buzzed with speculation, patrols busted doors of suspected sympathizers, and a pall of fear had replaced the former mood of revolutionary possibility. The king and the nobles had succeeded in focusing the public's confusion and disappointment into a single, targeted hatred. They never needed to catch him. Felix caught up with them. In the morning his trial was to begin—a gruesome spectacle set for the Sunken Arena, now a judicial colosseum—he simply walked out of the potter's shop and into the street. He did not skulk. He did not hide his face. He wore his simple, grey Academy robe, now somewhat frayed, and walked with a calm, steady gait towards the citadel. Bystanders stopped and stared. Whispers turned to cries. "It's him!" The city watch, incredulous at his audacity, surrounded him with a cautious circle, not to arrest him, but to protect him, as though he were

The capital seethed. The air, once thick with the ozone of magic and the perfume of nobility, was now rank with smoke, ash, and the bitter, metallic tang of liberated anger. The People's Verdict had left a power vacuum, a still, stunned silence at the heart of the kingdom. The king was a ghost in his stronghold, the nobles were licking their wounds behind barred and barricaded doors, and the streets belonged to a wary, empowered people.In this chaotic interregnum, while Felix and the Alliance labored to channel the people's energy into something more constructive than riotous catharsis, a different kind of power was incubating in the shadows. A power that was fed by resentment, humiliation, and a stolen shard of cosmic wisdom.Kael watched the trial from a hidden vantage point, his wrath a cold, hard knot in his chest. He had seen Felix, once again, defy certain destiny not through power, but through guile. He had seen the crowd, the same vulgar rabble he despised, rise up and topple

The note from Master Oswin had been a seed of hope in the sensory desert of the null-cell. Felix committed its message to memory—East wall, floor level—and then, with a regretful sigh, he ate the paper. Evidence was a luxury he could not afford. The act was a grim reminder of his condition: he was an animal in a cage, reduced to the most primitive of instincts.The "distraction" he had threatened was provided that night. Not a riot or an explosion, but something far more subtle and clever. A fire broke out in the royal scriptorium, a chamber filled with irreplaceable, flammable manuscripts. The bells that rang out across the citadel were not the low, lamenting tones of the night bell, but a frantic, high-pitched pealing. His guards, their discipline eroded by months of monotonous duty, abandoned their stations, their boots ringing off down the corridor.The silence closed in again, but it was a different silence. It was pregnant with possibility.Felix crawled to the east wall. On his