The corridors of the palace were a labyrinth of imposed order. The silence was not peaceful, but enforced, a vacuum where the hum of human spirit should have been. Lulal led Enki to a spartan chamber that had been prepared for him. A single cot, a water jug, a slit of a window looking out onto a geometrically perfect courtyard.
"He will summon you at his hour," Lulal said, his voice subdued. The awe he felt for Enki was now tempered by the oppressive weight of the city. "He tests you. The waiting is the first part of it."
Enki placed his pack on the cot. "He is not testing a supplicant. He is measuring a tool. Or a threat."
"And which are you?" Lulal asked, the question bold, born from their shared experience on the river.
Enki did not answer. He went to the window. Below, a line of laborers moved in a silent, rhythmic lockstep, carrying baskets of clay. Their faces were blank, their movements synchronized to a brutal, invisible metronome. It was a vision of the Great Sterility, born again in mud and brick. He saw the ghost of Liam Creed in Kur's design, the same obsession with the perfect, frictionless system. The King was here, and he had built a shrine to his own sin.
"He sees the world as a flaw to be corrected," Enki said, his voice low. "But a perfect system is a dead system. It cannot adapt. It cannot grow. It can only be maintained, until it shatters."
Lulal followed his gaze, seeing the laborers not as efficiency, but as cogs. "He calls it peace."
"He calls a tomb a home," Enki replied. The weight of his ow