Weeks passed, and the rhythm of life clawed its way back into the broken city.
Brasswick was scarred beyond recognition. Many districts lay in permanent ruin, their streets swallowed by molten brass that had since cooled into jagged rivers of metal. The air still stank of smoke, though rain softened the acrid bite. And yet the markets stirred again—makeshift stalls rising from rubble, offering bread, coal, bandages. Children played among the ruins, turning shattered gears into toys.
The rebellion was no more, its leaders dead, fled, or broken. But its spirit lingered. Ordinary citizens spoke not of perfection or inevitability, but of endurance. They muttered oaths never again to kneel before brass and shadow.
Elric returned to his modest flat, its windows cracked, its walls bearing scars of the city's convulsions. His desk was once again crowded with papers, though the equations he scrawled were no longer to outwit gods. They were memorials, calculations of the lives lost, each number a grave marker he dared not forget.
One evening Selene appeared at his door, leaning wearily in the frame. Her cloak was gone, her shadows faint, her once-razor smile dulled by exhaustion. "You've become a legend, Veyne," she murmured. "The detective who outwitted a god."
Elric poured brandy into two chipped glasses. "Legends are lies dressed prettily. All I did was survive long enough for her choice to matter."
Selene accepted her glass, studying him. "Sometimes, detective, that's all a legend is."
They drank in silence, the quiet between them filled with the hum of a city trying desperately to remember how to live.