The morning broke brittle. The sky wasn’t blue; it was ruled—lined thin and silver, as if the heavens themselves had been laid open on the Reviser’s desk. The beacon no longer hovered in vague threat; it pulsed, measuring, every blink like an underline pressed into their bones.
The villagers woke restless, their names raw from a night of being spoken again and again. Some had whispered them into the walls. Others etched them into doors. Children scrawled them into dirt with sticks, daring the dawn to forget.
Lena stood at the edge of the field with the broken quills clenched in her fist. The storm-crown flickered and cracked above her head, each arc a stubborn refusal to burn out. She didn’t feel strong. She felt written-over, tired, wrong in the bones. But she was still here.
Dominic j
