...It all started the day the people's minds went aglow, when the carriage of the King's magistrates came rumbling down the crimson-dusted road…
Krrrrr… krrrr… the wheels sang against the stones, like bones being ground into powder.
The bells of the High Tower of Annunciation had never rung so joyously, never, never, never.
From every corner of the newly christened Eastfield Union (once the proud, once the bleeding Redqlive Republic), the crowds surged like a living tide, like a red sea that had forgotten how to part.
Scarlet and gold banners snapped.
Children perched on shoulders, waving paper doves that would soon be trampled into the mud.
Old men who had wept the night democracy fell now wept again, this time with relief, believing, truly believing, the war was finally over.
"Unity!" the heralds bellowed from the balcony, voices cracking like whips.
"Unity under one crown!" the people roared back, drunk, so drunk on the single word.
At the foot of the tower the royal carriage halted.
Doors swung open.
Out stepped Ruthben the Second, pale, smiling that thin, rotting smile, silver chains glinting like jewellery around the wrists of the former Scholars (once the elected voices of Redqlive), now nothing more than honoured prisoners in velvet robes.
They lifted their heads to the cheering ocean, and the cheering grew louder, as if applause could scrub the shame from their skin.
And then, trailing behind like a black afterthought, came the third carriage.
Smaller. Windowless. Draped entirely in black velvet that drank the sunlight.
No crest. No guards dared ride too close.
Inside that velvet coffin on wheels sat Frenire Rothdell.
He sat perfectly still.
The cheers outside were thunder, thunder, thunder, yet not a single sound reached him.
Through a slit no wider than a dying man's last breath, he watched the crowds blur past: mouths open, eyes shining, hands reaching toward Ruthben as though he were a god and not a corpse wearing a crown.
Frenire felt nothing.
Not triumph.
Not contempt.
Not even the faint itch of boredom.
Only a vast, colourless calm, like a frozen lake with something enormous sleeping beneath the ice, waiting, waiting, waiting.
His fingers rested on his knees.
Clean nails.
Delicate hands.
He studied them the way another man might study a map already memorised.
Every line in his palm had been read.
Every future weighed.
Every scream accounted for.
A child's voice slipped through the slit:
"Long live the Union! Long live peace!"
Frenire's lips did not move.
Inside his chest, whatever had once passed for a heart made no sound at all.
He closed his eyes for one heartbeat and saw, still perfectly clear, the candlelit chamber, the chains, Arthur's last wet gasp, the moment he tore himself free wearing a new name.
Then the memory folded itself away, neat and silent.
When he opened his eyes again, the carriage had reached the shadow of the High Tower.
Ruthben was already climbing the steps, arms raised, drinking the adoration like poisoned wine.
Frenire remained seated.
He would not step out today.
Today belonged to the puppet.
Tomorrow, perhaps, the strings would be cut.
High above, on the cracked lip of the abandoned bell-tower three streets away, six hooded figures watched in silence.
A spyglass glinted beneath the central hood.
The hand that held it was missing the tip of its left index finger; coarse black stitches sealed the wound like a grotesque grin.
"Father will move tonight," the stitched-fingered man murmured, voice soft as falling ash. "The unification feast is the perfect veil."
Five hoods turned toward him.
Five pairs of eyes glowed faintly beneath shadow.
The one at his right was mountain-broad, shoulders straining the cloak like a siege engine draped in cloth.
Three others were lean, almost ordinary, save for the smooth white horns curling from their foreheads, polished, proud.
The last was a woman, smaller, horns delicate as crescent moons.
The stitched man lowered the scope and smiled.
Only his mouth was visible beneath the hood: a slow, wet crescent of teeth.
"If the strain becomes too much," he continued, almost kindly, "you may feed on the followers we embedded in the crowd. Their bodies are willing vessels. A little borrowed life. No need to die for pride tonight."
A low growl rumbled from the mountain of muscle.
Fists clenched. Cloth tore.
The woman placed a pale hand on the giant's arm. The growl died, but the rage did not.
Silence returned, thick as the incense drifting from the celebration below.
The stitched man lifted the scope again.
Through the lens, Ruthben the Second raised a hand in benediction to his new, adoring subjects.
The mouth beneath the hood widened further, until it seemed the smile might split the shadows in two.
"It all goes to the plan," he whispered, tasting the words like wine.
Then, softer still, a private vow only the wind heard:
"My plan."
Far below, the bells kept ringing.
Far above, the six horns waited for night.
And inside the black velvet carriage, Frenire Rothdell felt nothing,
and that was precisely why, when the time came,
no one would be ready.