The palace didn't fall to some grand invasion; it just choked on its own spit.
By mid-morning, the whole administrative district had turned into a maze that nobody could navigate. Elias had spent the last few days subtly messing with the filing and the stamps, and now the Cordon was just a series of dead ends. You had entire regiments of grey-coated Overseers standing nose-to-nose at every narrow intersection, clutching sealed orders that gave each of them priority over the other. And since the whole system was built on never asking questions, nobody was willing to be the first one to step aside.
The Clarity hummed at the back of Elias's skull—a low, vibrating thrum of pure desperation leaking out of the city. He stood on a high stone balcony, looking down at the plazas. Clueless clerks rushed past him with armfuls of useless paperwork, too panicked to even notice he was there.
Then the Magistrate finally showed his face on the Great Stair.
The man looked like hell. Gone was the cool, practiced mask he usually wore. His collar was yanked open, and he was scanning the gridlock of his own men with eyes that wouldn't stay still. He screamed an order, but the city wind just ate it. A messenger scrambled up to him, out of breath, only to hand him a report that completely blew up the one he was already holding.
It was a beautiful mess. The harder the old man tried to force his will on the streets, the more the whole machine ground to a halt.
Elias stepped back from the edge. He'd seen enough. He could feel the mood shifting in the people below. The citizens caught between the barricades weren't looking at the guards with terror anymore. They were looking at them with a kind of cold, mocking pity. You didn't even need a saboteur when the high command was doing a better job of wrecking the place than any rebel could've dreamed of.
He headed down into the gut of the city, taking the service tunnels where the air was thick with coal dust and the smell of people who actually worked for a living. Down here, news moved a lot faster than any official seal.
"North Arch is locked against the South," a kitchen girl whispered to a porter as Elias slipped by.
"The Magistrate's gone and lost the keys to his own damn house," the porter shot back with a dry, jagged laugh.
Elias felt the Clarity pulse. The story was changing. The "Villain" was being replaced by the "Fool." In a city built on the myth of being perfect, you could survive being a monster, but you couldn't survive being a joke.
He hit the lower tunnels just as the first real gap opened up in the Cordon above—a gate left wide open because the unit supposed to be guarding it was three blocks away, arguing with a checkpoint.
When he reached the hideout, the girl wasn't at the table. She was pressed against the ventilation grate, listening. The bells had stopped, replaced by something much nastier: the low, steady chant of a crowd that had realized the guards were too confused to put up a fight.
"The knot's finally tightening," Elias said, his voice flat against the stone walls.
She turned, her face caught in the orange flicker of a single candle. "The Overseers are bailing on the lower districts. They're all being pulled back to the palace to play bodyguard for the Magistrate."
"They're circling the wagons," Elias noted. He could see the retreat happening in his head. "They're ditching the city to save the system. But the system is just a pile of stone once people stop believing the lies."
He slumped into a chair at the old, scarred table, his body finally starting to feel the weight of the last few hours. The Clarity was starting to dim, leaving him with a dull, throbbing ache behind his eyes.
"What happens when the Magistrate realizes he's cornered?" she asked.
"He'll look for someone to blame," Elias said. "He'll try to burn the records to hide the evidence. He'll try to turn this embarrassment into some kind of tragedy so people forget he's the one who choked the city."
Elias stood up, his eyes locking onto a heavy iron key hanging on the wall—a piece of the old city works he'd scavenged weeks ago.
"We can't let him hide the truth in the smoke," he said. "Tomorrow, we stop watching the knot. We pull the thread that brings the whole thing down."
The girl just nodded, her hand resting on her blade. The silence in the basement felt thin, like the stones themselves were holding their breath, waiting for the world above to finally snap.