What Control Costs
Serath Vale did not answer defiance with rage.
He answered it with precision.
By morning, Mercy Hours were no longer optional.
They were enforced.
The bells rang earlier than usual—longer, deeper, their tone stripped of comfort. Guards in pale bands stood at every major crossing, hands resting calmly on batons etched with sigils Lumi did not recognize.
Containment marks.
At twenty-two, Lumi felt the truth recoil the moment she saw them.
"They're not weapons," she whispered to Blake. "They're dampeners."
"For you," Blake said grimly. "And for memory."
The city felt muted, as if sound itself had learned to flinch.
Then the cost was revealed.
The boy from the square—Elia's son—did not come home.
Lumi felt it before the message arrived. Truth does not scream when someone is taken.
It empties.
A woman burst into the watchhouse just past noon, grief raw and uncontrolled. "They took my nephew," she sobbed. "Said he needed 'extended relief.' He only spoke her name."
Lumi's hands curled into fists.
"They imprisoned a child," Blake said, voice dangerously flat.
"No," Lumi corrected, swallowing hard. "They removed him."
The relief hall had changed.
Where incense once softened the air, sigils now glowed faintly along the walls. Rows of cots filled the space, each occupied by someone staring peacefully into nothing.
Sleeping.
Remembering nothing that hurt.
Remembering nothing at all.
Lumi staggered as truth brushed across them—thinned, stretched, severed from context.
"They're not dead," she whispered. "But pieces of them are… gone."
Serath waited at the far end of the hall, hands folded behind his back.
"I warned you," he said calmly. "Unregulated truth fractures people."
"You erased him," Lumi said, voice shaking with fury. "You erased a person."
Serath's gaze did not waver. "I spared him a lifetime of bleeding."
Blake took a step forward, shadows surging violently. "Bring him back. Now."
Serath finally looked at the Dreadsword.
"You feel it, don't you?" he said quietly. "How easy this could be if you let go of hesitation."
The blade pulsed—hungry.
Order prevents suffering, it whispered.
Lumi stepped between them, breath ragged. "This is what control costs," she said. "You don't get to decide which pain makes someone human."
Serath studied her for a long moment.
"I do," he said softly. "Because someone must."
The truth flared—angry, incandescent.
He believes this with absolute clarity.
That night, word spread.
Not whispered—warned.
Speak carefully.
Remember selectively.
Grief is dangerous now.
In the lower districts, people hid mementos beneath floorboards. Scraps of paper with names written too many times to forget. Songs hummed only under breath.
Resistance learned to be quiet.
On the watchhouse roof, Lumi shook with exhaustion and rage.
"I did this," she whispered. "If I hadn't—"
Blake took her face gently in his hands. "If you hadn't spoken, they would have learned to disappear without protest."
Below them, the city glowed with enforced calm.
Above them, the stars dimmed further—watching, waiting.
Serath had drawn his line.
And Noctyrrh learned, all at once, that control did not come without cost.
It simply decided who paid it first.