"Long live the Sovereign!"
A cluster of families near the eastern block picked it up. Then the children, because children loved shouting and the reason mattered less than the volume. Then the craftsman's wife, standing at her third-floor window with her palm still pressed against the warm quartz, leaned out and added her voice to the chorus.
The craftsman, standing in the workshop district below, heard his wife's voice carrying over the rooftops. He looked down at the heated floor beneath his boots, ran his thumb across the smooth workshop wall one more time, and muttered, "Benevolent Sovereign," as if the words tasted strange but not entirely wrong.
"Benevolent Sovereign!" someone shouted from the southern quarter, and a few people nearby looked at the shouter like he'd lost his mind, because you didn't call the Primordial Villain benevolent, that wasn't how any of this worked, that was the man who shattered barriers and raised the dead and conquered cities before breakfast.
