Days blurred. I went through the motions of the courts, my robes hanging on me like a shroud. The words I once recited with devotion now tasted of ash. Every sentence I spoke fell on deaf ears. Every truth I carried was drowned by coin.
My clients still came. Poor men, widows, beggars accused of petty crimes. They looked at me with desperate eyes, the same eyes my mother wore when she gave me the last of her bread. I wanted to tell them the truth, that the law was never written for them, but the words stuck in my throat. Instead, I fought, and lost, and fought again, as if the ritual itself mattered more than the outcome.
The judges barely listened. Prosecutors smirked. Opposing lawyers clinked glasses in taverns with the men who passed verdicts by day. Their laughter followed me home at night, echoing in my skull.
I began to drink. At first, a glass to numb the weight. Then a bottle, then another. The bitterness in my chest demanded fuel.
One night, Maren, the student who had once whispered that right didn't matter here, found me outside the courthouse. She had joined a firm, dressed in silk, her hair shining under lamplight. She looked at me with pity.
"You're burning yourself alive, Elias," she said. "Stop taking their cases. Work for those who can pay. Save yourself."
I shook my head. "If I abandon them, who will stand for them?"
She sighed. "No one. That's the truth. And it won't change."
She walked away, her footsteps fading, leaving me alone with the weight of her words.
That night I returned to my office, sat in the dark, and stared at my books. The laws I had once worshipped stared back at me. Words like justice, truth, equality, they mocked me now. I tore one book apart, ripping pages until the air filled with drifting shreds. My anger shook the walls.
Then I collapsed to my knees, my hands buried in the wreckage. I pressed my forehead to the floor and spoke into the silence. My voice cracked, raw with fury.
"Are you watching? Do you see what they do in your name? If you are gods, then you are cowards. If you are just, then prove it. Show me that justice exists, or damn me for ever believing in you."
The room fell still. No answer came. Only the sound of my own breath, ragged and broken.
But in that silence, something in me snapped. The man who had prayed to the law, who had worshipped justice like a saint, died on that floor.
What rose in his place was empty, waiting to be filled.