The defeat of Master Theron was the quietest yet. There was no shouted defiance, no dramatic expulsion. He had simply been presented with the magnificent, unruly truth of a living history and had found his own sterile methodology wanting. He left Aethelburg not in disgrace, but in a state of profound, scholarly confusion, his neat ledger filled with contradictory truths that his philosophy could not reconcile.
The city, in the wake of his departure, felt more solid, more *real*. The stories told around the hearths that night were not just recollections; they were reclamations. Every citizen had become a guardian of their own past, a curator of their personal piece of the tapestry. The collective memory had been strengthened by the assault, its threads woven tighter, its colors more defiantly vibrant.
