For a stunned moment, the council chamber was as silent as the grave. The screams from the city below served as a funeral dirge for the world they had known just moments before. Captain Eva was the first to move, her training overriding the freezing shock. The city was a powder keg, and their enemy had just thrown a torch into it.
"Lock down the gates!" she barked at the terrified guard still kneeling in the doorway. "No one in or out! Joric!" she yelled, knowing her second-in-command would be organizing the Guard in the palace courtyard. "Double the patrols! Disperse the crowds! Use non-lethal force, but get the people off the streets! I want order!"
The guard scrambled to obey, his panic replaced by the clarity of a direct order. As Eva turned back to the room, she saw the crisis reflected in the faces of the kingdom's most powerful men. Lord Emmon was physically shaking, muttering about the collapse of all commerce. General Kyrus had his hand on the hilt of his sword, a soldier's useless reflex against an enemy he could not strike. High Priest Theron was on his knees, his lips moving in a silent, desperate prayer, but to whom, Eva could not guess. And Praxus… Praxus simply looked on with a profound, weary sorrow, the reluctant prophet watching his terrible vision come to pass.
King Valerius stood rigid, his gaze fixed on the chaos unfolding beyond the high window. The cold fury in his eyes had coalesced into something harder, something absolute. "He made a public demonstration," the King said, his voice a low whisper of disbelief. "He executed one of my subjects in the middle of my capital to prove a point."
"It's a trap, Your Majesty," Praxus said, his voice cutting through the shock. "A psychological one."
All eyes turned to him.
"Think of his goal, as the Lament described it," Praxus explained, his tone urgent. "A 'single, perfect note of worship.' He doesn't just want to kill us. He wants to corrupt us. He wants us to choose to enter his bargain. To sacrifice our own lives for a bag of gold, for a lover's affection, for the cure of a sick child. He wants our last act on this earth to be a selfish, transactional one. That is his true victory: to turn the human spirit into a commodity."
"So we do nothing?" Lord Emmon stammered. "We simply forbid prayer and allow The Reaping to continue at his leisure?"
"The Reaping was for a silent, ignorant flock," General Kyrus growled. "Now he has spoken. The rules have changed. He has offered a choice. Damnation or death."
"Then we shall offer a third option," King Valerius declared, turning from the window. The grief on his face was gone, replaced by the unyielding resolve of a monarch at war. "Rebellion."
He looked at the men around him. "Our first strategy was to hide the truth to prevent panic. That strategy is now ashes. The truth, or a version of it, has been screamed into the mind of every person in this kingdom. We can no longer fight a War of Whispers. Our only choice is to arm our people with a different truth."
He strode to his writing desk, seizing a piece of blank parchment. "Theron, get up."
The High Priest looked up, his eyes hollow.
"Get up, man," the King commanded, his voice ringing with authority. "Your god is dead. Your faith is a lie. But you are still the High Priest. The people will listen to your voice, if not your god's. You will help me draft a new proclamation. We will give them a new enemy, and a new way to fight."
For the next hour, they forged the most important document in the history of their civilization. It was an act of supreme heresy, a declaration of war against the heavens.
Eva stood witness as the King, with input from a now-focused Praxus, dictated the terms. When it was finished, Valerius read it aloud.
"Let it be proclaimed in every city, town, and village of this kingdom, by order of King Valerius, your sovereign protector! The voice that spoke from the sky is not the voice of our shepherd, Qy'iel. It is the voice of a Celestial Tyrant, the Carver of Silence spoken of in the oldest and truest texts, an ancient enemy who has usurped the throne of heaven."
"The Great Silence was not a test, but a shadow of a great battle in which our beloved Qy'iel was lost to us. This tyrant now wears his face and speaks with his voice, but its heart is a void."
"The 'Covenant of Sacrifice' it offers is a venomous lie, a trap for the soul designed to turn our final moments into acts of selfish desperation. To accept this bargain is not a display of faith; it is a surrender to the enemy."
"Therefore, a new decree is made. The Declaration of Silence is reaffirmed, but its meaning has changed. We are not silent out of piety. We are silent out of DEFİANCE. Every prayer that goes unanswered is a victory. Every refusal to engage the enemy's bargain is an act of war. Our silence is now our shield. Our unity, our weapon."
He lowered the parchment. "So it shall be written, so it shall be proclaimed."
By officially validating Praxus's "heresy," the King had taken the scholar's burden and placed it upon his own crowned head. He was now the heretic-in-chief, leading his entire kingdom in open rebellion against their new, monstrous god.
He turned to his council, his eyes blazing. "Eva. Your War of Order is now a War of Truth. Take this decree. Have it copied and spread by every crier and every loyal soldier. I want the people to know they have been deceived. I want their fear to be forged into anger."
"General Kyrus," the King continued. "Your War of Strength has a new focus. Praxus believes our greatest weapon is the 'chorus of many voices.' Your search for anomalies is no longer about strange abilities. It is about the human spirit. Find me the defiant. Find me the leaders, the artists, the healers who refuse to break. Find me the ones who, in the face of this absolute despair, still find a reason to hope. They are the core of our new army."
As the council members were dismissed to carry out their new, desperate orders, Eva lingered for a moment, finding herself beside Praxus on the high balcony once more. The city below was still a sea of chaos, but now, a new sound was beginning to cut through the screams. It was the sound of the Royal Criers' horns, followed by the powerful, defiant words of the King's proclamation.
Some people in the streets reacted with renewed horror. But others… others stopped screaming and started listening. Their faces, once slack with terror, began to harden with a new, dangerous emotion: rage.
"The King has just worn the heretic's crown," Praxus said softly, watching the scene below.
"It is a heavy crown," Eva replied, her hand resting on the hilt of her sword. "But for the first time in a year, it feels like we are fighting back."
The secret war was over. The public rebellion had just begun. And in the heart of a terrified, grieving city, the first, fragile seeds of the Age of Defiance were being sown in the fertile soil of a shared and terrible truth.
---
The Chronicle of the Fallen
Time Period Covered: Day 2 of the Age of Fear
• Victims of The Reaping: 0
• Victims of the Covenant: 23
• Total Lives Lost: 23
Of Note Among the Fallen:
— A renowned poet in the southern city of Lyra's Point, who prayed for a final, perfect verse.
— Elder Rashid of the Al-Sabil Caravan, who guided travelers across Zahram.