By the third day, the crown was no longer the villain.
Waylen realized that as he walked through the refugee quarter and heard his own name spoken with the same weight the crown's once carried. People didn't curse the artifact anymore.
They spoke about it like a storm terrible, inevitable, finished.
But him?
They argued about him.
"He stopped the fires near the river."
"He left before the south quarter burned."
"He could have done more."
Waylen kept moving, head lowered, cloak pulled tight around his shoulders. The absence of the crown's voice should have felt like freedom. Instead, it felt like standing in a room where everyone waited for him to speak first.
Seris noticed it too. "They're rewriting things," she said quietly.
"They always were," Waylen replied. "The crown just made it easier."
Near the edge of the camp, a group of mourners sat in a loose circle. No prayers. No priest. Just people holding names in their mouths like broken glass. Waylen slowed when a woman looked up and met his gaze.
"You're the one who lived," she said.
He didn't deny it.
"My daughter didn't," the woman continued. There was no accusation in her voice. That was worse. "The fire stopped two streets away. I watched it turn. I thought " Her voice faltered. "I thought that meant we were safe."
Waylen swallowed. "I didn't choose where it stopped."
"I know," she said. "That's why I remember you."
She turned away, ending the conversation.
Waylen stood there longer than he should have. Around him, people clung to fragments half-truths, partial miracles, moments that almost saved them. Without the crown, they needed something else to explain why survival felt uneven.
They needed someone close enough to blame.
By dusk, arguments broke out over food distribution, over shelter, over whose losses mattered more. Waylen watched from a distance, refusing to intervene.
If he stepped in, he would become what they wanted him to be.
If he didn't, he would become what they feared.
"There's no clean place to stand anymore," Seris said softly.
Waylen nodded. "There never was. The crown just pretended there was."
As night settled over the camp, Waylen understood the truth that no prophecy had warned him about:The crown had shaped fear.
But memory would shape judgment.
And memory, unlike curses,
did not die easily.