Late into the night, when the embers of fires that had burned for years filled the sky with the smell of charcoal, Naiv sat scheming his next move.
Ashura stood beside him, as statuesque as before, while Mir sat on a wobbly chair, trying to be presentable despite all the sleepless nights she had spent. Elsa, however, looked towards the door as if expecting something awful to burst through it at any moment.
Naiv whispered softly, pointing to a location on the map:
"The plan is proceeding according to schedule. The increasing disappearances have instilled fear, and all of them have fallen silent. They're all waiting for someone to be blamed, while we… continue."
Ashura replied, without even looking at him:
"But this silence is deadly. One scream in the other direction could shatter the whole wall."
That was when a guard came in, his face worried, and stated: "Sir… there are little pieces of paper floating around, in a strange handwriting. Nobody knows who put them there."
Naiv's eyes lifted in shock: "Words? What words?"
The guard hesitated before declaring: "They were also carved on the wall, hardly legible, but you can read them: 'When they say that you're crazy… maybe you're one of the few that still see the reality.'"
Naiv stood frozen. He looked at Ashura, and then he shouted: "Where was the guard?"
The guard answered: "No one had seen anything. The night had been thick, as if something had briefly smothered the spot."
Naiv rushed out of the room, with Ashura behind him. When they reached the square, the word was there, etched on the grey brick like a boil on a sick man's skin.
Naiv looked at it, then spoke softly: "He's clever… He doesn't want to expose us. He wants to shake the image we constructed. Planting small, hidden seeds of doubt that mushroom."
The next day, there was a piece of gossip circulating amongst the civilian community that the new-received food tasted different. One woman supposedly found something that resembled a human bone fragment in her ration. Naturally, the bone disappeared, but still, this gossip went rampant.
In the meantime, crude caricatures were discovered on the alley walls behind the warehouse where men with black eyes were dragging bodies into a black hole.
Realizing the observer no longer played, Naiv gathered a small circle. He stated:
"We have an adversary who doesn't possess the power to oppose us, but is clever enough to turn our power into something that impedes us. He's not wanting to expose us… he's wanting to stall the plan long enough that we disintegrate from within."
Elsa, her voice quivering a bit:
"What if we're facing an adversary who doesn't make mistakes?"
Naiv evaded the question and stared at Mir:"It's time to respond. Not with force—brains."
The next night, anonymous fliers blanketed the city, with the following message inscribed upon them:
"If you refuse to believe in the light, learn to survive in darkness. Silence is safety. Questions will kill you."
But they weren't the real messages. In a back street alley, there was a burned doll strung up, dressed in a uniform belonging to an old soldier. On its chest was a leather patch that stated:\\\"I was one of the believers.\\"
The atmosphere began to rise.
In the planning room, Naiv began to study the notes more than he studied the maps. He spoke less and thought more.
One evening he announced: "If this observer keeps on pushing, we'll have to lop off the head of doubt. Anyone who has doubts about us will be killed."
Zorim spoke up in disagreement quietly: "You don't fight shadows by killing the walls."
Naiv was silent.
But he was unaware that the resistance had already activated the second trap.
A young man named Kala, an unassuming volunteer in the digging team, carried a small piece of paper stuck in his pocket. He still hadn't read it. The note was simple:"Read it when you see blood again."
And the blood… would come soon.
And so began the cold war in the city—no bullets, but whispers, glares, and words etched between the fissures.
And the observer… still hadn't made a mistake.
The next day, the town awoke to something unusual. In the middle of the square, across from the crumbled minaret, a heavy black-handwritten note was left behind. No one dared approach, but its message went viral:
"When the innocent die in the dark… do not think that those who live in the light are angels. Blood is not an error, and disappearing is not an aftermath."
Ashura tore the paper when he saw it, but the psychological wave had already spread. Whispers, suspicious looks, hushed words in the corners. Naiv felt the observer went overboard straight away.
Naiv called fifty people from the east area to be interrogated and dispatched guards to the central warehouse. He sat along with Zorim and Ashura in the basement and said:
"Nobody plays like that unless they think they are smarter than us. It's time we expose them. or burn them alive in public."
But the observer had prepared.
That night, the auxiliary warehouse was burnt to ashes from an unidentified source. No one was harmed, but half of the equipment was lost. Another message was left on the wall with charcoal:
"You'll not hear me, but you'll feel me. I'll make your hunger voice me."
Naiv shouted as he stared at the fires:
"Stop the rumors! Stop eating yourselves, abominations! This is no moment for weakness!"
But in his voice, a fear rage had crept in.
Then he muttered threateningly:
"We've got a traitor provoking them, and we've got to sever him before it all gutters. I don't want cooperation. I want obedience."
Elsa, glancing at ash on her boot:
And if one of us?
There was quiet.
Zorim gripped the hilt of his sword:
So be it. Rules are broken when the ship is burning.
But the observer was not keen on igniting only anger.
That night, while Naiv was keeping watch at the top post, a small strip of paper fell at his feet. He did not see who threw it. He picked it up and read:
"You kill the seeds to live, but they grow in cadavers."
Naiv clutched the paper so tightly that it tore. He didn't smile. Didn't speak. He simply turned his face toward shadow and murmured:
"If you want to play with fire, I'll set the city aflame for you."
The observer, from a position of hiding, watched. He didn't smile.
But in his eyes… a plan was formed.
That night, Naiv spent by himself in a dimly lit monitoring room, maps and lists of names in front of him, flipping through pages with eyes burning with calculations.
He spoke to himself: "If your mind hides itself in darkness… I'll force it into light. I never imagined that I would need to use those skills within the city again."
By the morning, Naiv made an official announcement: fifty randomly selected civilians would be selected for a "Reality Test"—a technique he claimed could detect "early rift influence" via eye and emotional testing.
What ordinary people didn't realize was that Naiv already had a virtually precise map of the resistance group's travel through resonance-based tracking—like a chip he had secretly implanted on one of them before letting him go.
47 civilians were taken in to the large hall that day. Three didn't show.
They were the three men and the woman who were standing with the child—"The suspects vanished inexplicably."
"Coincidence? I don't think so." Naiv grumbled, looking at the list, a small smile for the first time spreading on his lips.
That night, Naiv launched a surprise attack on an empty house in the western section of the city, tracing the steps of one of the observer's civilians who had tried to start a small fire as a diversion.
The attack was quick, quiet… lethal.
Three of Naiv's observer support team members were captured. They were being held in the lower cellar, where light and sound could not reach. The fourth. had his head severed.
The next day, a new poster had appeared in the square. No signature. No threat.
"Sometimes, the first to see the truth… is slaughtered for it."
But individuals weren't as afraid as they had been previously.
Their terror was fast becoming obedience, not insurrection. And in some of their eyes, they saw Naiv as something more. not just a leader, but a pressure valve against madness—especially after what they heard happened to those who tried to join up with that "madness."
Behind closed doors, the observer observed.
For the first time, he felt the ground he walked on. wasn't solid.
"We've gotten too close to the fire…"
he instructed one of his last agents, holding the shattered pendant the child used to wear.
"We need to change the rhythm… or we'll be flattened."
That evening, Naiv spoke to Mir, Ashura, and Elsa, and declared:
"Beating them wasn't a victory… but we broke the wolf's leg. If it does move again, the whole city will hear the sound."
Ashura, in a low tone:
"For the first time, he's the one bleeding."