Noon arrived as a verdict, not a time. The sky polished itself until it reflected nothing but obedience, and the streets felt the way marble does before a name is chiseled into it. On the watchtower's crown, a figure in solar mail planted a spear into sunlight and drew law out of it like wire.
The Sunfall Commander did not descend so much as extend; radiance made stairs under his feet, each step a clause sharpened to a blade. Where his shadow should have been, footnotes advanced in tidy ranks. His voice was the color of heat seen through a veil: Designation replaces folk-name; district C-19 shall be titled Compliance Ward.
On three rooftops at once, the answer began to gather. Selene stood with night pooled around her ankles like water finding low ground. Luna spread brass leaves and magnets across a skylight, showing the city a rhythm it could walk to. Cyrus rolled his shoulders, Oath cord steady; he had learned how to be a wall against light. Aragorn gripped the bell, fire a white seam along his forearm, the new stitch under the black brand itching as the day leaned heavier.
They moved before speeches could plant roots. Selene lifted her hands; wells, doorways, and the undersides of eaves surrendered their shadows and drifted upward, thread into thread, until a net began to spread across the noon like lace daring a blade. Luna set magnets in a quick square and wrote a sentence over them: Illumination reveals; it does not adjudicate. The words found the sky's grammar and put an elbow in it.
Trumpets gasped politely. The Commander lowered his spear. Sun wrote itself into beams and descended with clerical precision, each ray a line ending in a period. Cyrus stepped into the birdsong heat with a grin that only people who have chosen their pain can manage. The first beam met his chest, and the Oath cord thrummed, splitting the burn into a hundred thin stings that ran along side streets and across courtyards into the arms of a district that had promised to carry weight together. Children hissed at the hurt and then laughed because they had been told it would come and it had arrived exactly as predicted.
The Commander adjusted focus, annoyed as a surgeon whose patient insists on breathing. He shaped a beam into a word and sent it hunting: Rename. The word dropped toward the city's throat with the inevitability of an unexamined policy.
Luna moved first. She tapped the magnets and snapped a second clause into place: Names may grow; imposed designations ask permission. The word Rename faltered, turned to Rename? too late to keep its sharpness.
Aragorn lifted the bell an inch, letting it hum just enough to unsettle the pen hidden inside sunlight. He felt for time and found the thorned bird awake behind his eye, head cocked. Three seconds would buy a city's name—if he could keep the Artemis-hound from collecting them like coins.
The hound arrived as if summoned by thought, lean and gray, its collar full of quills that tasted missing moments. It padded along the parapet, took in the synchronized heartbeat, and waited for the first jump of the second hand.
"Don't blink," Selene said, voice thread through shadow, already stitching the net thicker where the Commander cut holes with clean noon. "Not alone."
"Together, then," Cyrus said, and knocked his chest once. The Oath cord drummed, and the district answered in the soles of its feet, pulses clicking into a single loop. Luna swung a magnet on a string and set the city's breath to a metronome. Tam, cheeks white with chalk dust and joy, wrote the true name of the neighborhood on a dozen doors and then began a chant children could remember without being taught: the name, three beats of silence, the name again.
The Commander wrote a larger sentence that shone so hard it hurt to squint at: Compliance is kind. For a heartbeat the net of shade glazed, and Selene's lips peeled back from her teeth in a private snarl. Shadows are not cowards; they simply prefer to be invited.
Aragorn took the three seconds.
He did not pull them with the old grip. He let the loop of collective rhythm hold him afloat and slid under it like a diver who trusts the water. The world became soft once, twice, three times. The bell hummed into the spear of light. His brand pressed the hinge of the sentence. Illumination reveals—yes. It does not adjudicate—now. He added a third stroke while the second hand held its breath: Verdict requires shade. The sky had to share.
The hound lunged for the stolen frames with the delight of a craftsman returning to his bench, and met nothing that singled itself out as prey. Three seconds lived in a thousand wrists. Missing time was everywhere and therefore nowhere. The hound skidded, snorted, and, not embarrassed, sat.
The Commander saw the law in his light lose title to the word must and tried a different weapon: he wrote the city's new designation onto the air itself, letters tall enough to cast their own shade: COMPLIANCE WARD. The words began to drop toward roofs, ready to sit heavy on maps, deeds, tongues.
Selene's net caught them. Luna's clause made them ask, Who consents? Neighbors opened windows and leaned out, not to shout—silence of law was trying to set a bell-jar again—but to be counted as witnesses. They tapped the rhythm and mouthed the street's own name. A ripple of nosy acquiescence ran down lanes and up stairs: Not that name. Ours.
The Commander narrowed his eyes into a smaller sun. He brought his spear up and widened the beam until it was a sheet. The sheet fell toward the district whole: Kneel, receive, rise, the condensed sermon of a thousand mornings.
Cyrus laughed without sound and became a brace. The Oath cord thrummed until the hurt divided obediently, and the hurt, divided, became manageable even when it was everywhere. Tam bit his lip hard enough to taste iron and kept writing the name on everything that would hold chalk, including his own forearm.
Aragorn stepped forward into the sheet because it is stupid to ask a wall to stand always in the same place. The fire along his arm sharpened until it judged intent and found bureaucracy. The bell's hum shook the vowels in the beam until they forgot how to kneel. He set the mirror‑law on the spearpoint and let the Commander's light see the faces it meant to flatten: bakers with flour on their lashes, a girl who had planted a tomato in a boot, three men arguing about a roof tile as if the tile had invited them to speak of justice.
Light that must look becomes less certain.
The Auditor finally spoke from a rooftop to the west, pen poised but idle. "Your refusal of efficiency creates casualties."
Luna didn't look up. "Your worship of efficiency creates catastrophe."
Selene pulled the last coolness from beneath a fountain and threw it into the sky. Shade coalesced into darker cloud. The Commander sliced, tidy as surgery. The cloud re-knit with the obstinacy of a neighborhood committee. Steam rose where a dozen hydrants opened without permission because permission had gone to get coffee. A cloud of ordinary water decided to be extraordinary, and the day grudgingly allowed it.
The beam thinned. The Commander stepped down until his feet met stone, not because he was tired, but because someone had asked him to prove he could. He did not draw a sword. He reached for the city's throat again, gentler: Name yourself, then, he offered, and I will file you faithfully.
"Filed names can be lost," Selene said, almost kindly. "We will eat ours."
She began the chant out loud because law cannot hear whisper if the whisper is hospitality. Children echoed her at a volume that disrespected no one and dissuaded everyone. The chant walked up walls and sat in the ears of statues. Neighbors passed it hand to hand like bowls.
Aragorn set the bell's lip against the ground and wrote with heat along the curb where the name already lived in scuff and boot-print: A city's name belongs to the mouths that use it and the feet that wear it. The bell agreed. The brand cooled into a satisfaction that was also grief for every name rewritten by someone who did not cook there.
The hound chose a lower quarry: it nosed a corner where a police clerk had cut two minutes from a shift and ate the petty theft happily. It wagged its tail at Aragorn in passing, professional courtesy between thieves.
The Commander saw the balance tilt and attempted one last clean tactic. He raised his spear and drew a circle that would cool the district's temper for twenty-four hours, soothing away the courage that makes tiring work possible. Luna reached first and set magnets at the circle's cardinal points. Politeness will be honored, she wrote, but not at the cost of action. The circle sighed and agreed to a compromise. It became a holiday instead of a sedative.
Trumpets realized there would be no grand cadence and played punctuation instead. The Commander took one step back, then another, then allowed the stairs of light to retract beneath him. "Designation pending further review," he said, which is how sunlight admits defeat without learning the word.
When he reached the height where verdicts are born, he looked down once. Not at Aragorn. At the cloud. It disobeyed the day by continuing to exist. This seemed to interest him.
The sky unclenched. Shade resumed its quiet trade with heat. The district's name sat on stoops and drew breath like a tired animal that has decided to live most of another day. People did not cheer; they looked at each other to make sure everyone had been in the same story.
Cyrus sagged against a wall and let the Oath cord cool. Tam leaned his forehead to the chalk on his arm and laughed from his sternum. Selene folded shadow into a square and tucked it away like a handkerchief one might need later for smoke. Luna packed magnets with a precision that put courage back in its labeled drawer so she could find it again.
Aragorn blinked once—the regular kind—and the bird behind his eye settled its feathers. He looked toward the west roof. The Auditor had stopped writing altogether. The pen balanced across his fingers like a tool a man respects more after it has been refused.
"This name will be a problem," the Auditor said, not to them. "Good."
He left the rooftop like a footnote refiled for a different chapter.
Aragorn touched the bell and then the curb where the sentence glowed, faint as a memory that refuses to fade. "Paid," he told the day. "Interest pending."
Selene nudged his elbow. "Don't make promises to a calendar," she said, teasing as someone who has decided not to die of kindness. "It never keeps them."
"Next," Luna asked, not because she wanted to rush victory, but because victory sours when not fed work. "Seraphim Commander?"
Cyrus grinned, bruised and bright. "Bring him. I have shade enough."
Tam looked at the sky and then at the name on his arm. "We should paint it," he said. "Big."
"Do," Selene said. "And spell it wrong twice so the Tower can't erase all of it at once."
They began to move again, because only statues are allowed to hold poses under this much light. The city exhaled, then inhaled, then exhaled, the way a patient does when told the fever has broken and must still drink water.
The bell did not ring. It hummed like something that has discovered a song it can play without breaking.
— End of Episode 10 —
Key powers this episode: Sky‑clause—Illumination reveals, not adjudicates; Verdict requires shade. Collective blink (synchronized pulses to mask the three‑second use). Mirror‑law to reflect light's authors. Oath pain‑split against solar writs. Shadow‑net cloud and hydrant steam. Alias/name anchoring to mouths and feet. Politeness‑circle turned holiday. Artemis‑hound diverted to petty theft.
Focus cast: Aragorn, Selene, Luna, Cyrus, Tam; Sunfall Commander; distant Auditor; Artemis‑hound.