It took three days for the fires to burn out.
Not because they lacked fuel.
Because there was no world left for them to consume.
The Concordium had been the spine of order. Without it, the cities fell quiet. Without it, the ancient laws of mark and memory unraveled like thread pulled from flesh.
Those who survived did not speak of salvation.
They spoke only of the man who now sat upon the Seat Remade.
Sevrien did not move in those three days.
He sat where the Seventh Seat had cracked, where the spiral sun had once burned, where names had been bled and buried.
He watched the moons drift apart.
He listened to the silence the Priests had tried to preserve.
And when at last the fires dimmed, when the sky grew cold again, he rose.
Not reborn.
Not revered.
Simply unchained.
Below, the first survivors emerged from hiding.
Concordium Scribes, stripped of sigils.
Pathfinders without maps.
Sentinels without banners.
They looked up at the ruin.
They saw him standing there.
And they did not bow.
They waited.
"What now?" someone asked.
Not to him.
To themselves.
To the ashes.
Sevrien did not answer.
Not yet.
He descended the broken steps of what had been the Hall of Names, his shadow stretching long across cracked stone.
No guards followed. No council gathered.
Only absence.
Only hunger.
Only the quiet promise of something different.
In the ruins of the Square, he found a child sitting alone.
No parents.
No crest.
No mark.
Just wide, empty eyes and a hand closed tight around a stone with no meaning.
Sevrien knelt.
"Do you know your name?" he asked.
The child shook her head.
"Then choose one."
"Start there."
Word spread.
Not fast.
Not loud.
But steady.
The man who burned the Concordium wasn't killing.
He wasn't building walls.
He wasn't branding flesh.
He was… listening.
And where his shadow passed, the laws that had once ruled no longer held weight.
Names could be taken.
Or left behind.
Or remade.
In the south, warbands gathered.
In the north, old Houses plotted.
In the isles, curses stirred beneath black waves.
But none dared march on the ruin of the Concordium.
Not yet.
Not while the man who had burned it stood unchallenged.
On the fourth night, Lys returned.
Not to plead.
Not to fight.
Just to understand.
She found him by the cracked gates, speaking to no one, watching the wind pull ash into new patterns.
"You could rule," she said.
He nodded.
"I won't."
"Why not?"
"Because I've already ruled something once."
"What?"
He looked up.
At the moons, still distant. Still bleeding light like old wounds.
"Myself."
They stood in silence.
Not as they had before.
Not as enemies.
Not as survivors.
Simply… as witnesses.
To the ruin.
To the chance beneath it.
"What will you call this place now?" Lys asked.
"If not the Concordium."
He considered.
Not for long.
"Nothing."
"Let them name it themselves."
"Let them build from ash."
"If they want thrones again, they can carve them with their own hands."
She smiled.
Not warmth.
Not forgiveness.
Only understanding.
"You never wanted to burn the world."
"No."
"You just wanted it to stop burning you."
They watched the dawn bleed over cracked stone.
No banners rose.
No laws returned.
Only people.
Crawling from ruin.
Carrying their names in their own mouths for the first time.
Free.
Terrified.
Alive.
Sevrien turned away.
Toward whatever came next.
Not Keiran.
Not Auren.
Not Vayne.
Just a name spoken aloud, without shame.
"I am Sevrien."
"I was broken."
"I was bound."
"I was burned."
"And now… I build."