Halron Vale didn't retaliate with speeches.
They wrote music.
Orchestras filled streets with compositions drawn from archived silence—melodies banned under doctrine, notes stolen from Caelum's early essays before they were twisted. The city didn't chant. It harmonized.
Paint shimmered across their buildings—not slogans, but scenes. Children reading. Old rebels dancing. A teacher holding a lantern shaped like a heart. And beneath each mural, a single word:
"Remember."
Caelum watched from a floating platform above the city—hover-spell cloaked, unseen. He didn't speak. The devil perched beside him, legs crossed like an amused god.
"They're rewriting your memory," she said. "And they're better at it than you were."
Below, a crowd formed without notice. Thousands. Alren stood among them, now older. Holding a scroll.
When opened, it revealed Caelum's original thesis—rescued, restored, unedited. They read it aloud.
Every line was human.
Every ideal burned soft.
"We are strongest when we forgive what power taught us to fear."
The city lit candles in silence.
Caelum blinked hard. Looked at his hands.
They didn't glow.
They trembled.
"They should fear me," he whispered.
The devil leaned in, lips near his ear.
"They don't fear you. They remember you. And that's worse."
He turned away.
Not toward empire.
Toward elegy.