02:50 p.m. - At Cathedral Balcony, Dawnspire.
The market below smells of smoke and hot paper. Torches dot the square like bright, angry teeth. I can feel the heat even from up here, through stone and distance. People press close, faces lit in orange and red, some are laughing with the small, sharp laugh of a crowd given a body to hate. Others stand straighter, as if height can make them holy. Varena is there, a plain cloak and a silver ring flashing when someone nudges her elbow. Odrik has that too-wide smile that works like a blade, he watches to see which way the coin will fall.
The cartpile is a small mountain of papers, jars, pamphlets stamped with the name Technologia, and scraps of metal that used to mean things to my workers. Apprentices' sheets. Order invoices. Letters. Someone has thrown in a dented tin of soap. Someone else pushes a charred nib. The flames drink everything, turn flat, useful things into ash in an instant.
Children sing at the edge—clearly a younger brother and a younger sister among them, voices bright and wrong for the place.
!("Fire cleans the stain, the city goes white!")
The chant unrolls through the square and becomes a new thing. It has no subtlety. It eats up the empty places in people's chests and fills them with heat. The children repeat the lines like lessons:
!("Fire cleans the stain, the city goes white.")
Up here, on the cathedral balcony, Marcelline stands like a wall. Her robes are white and gold, they catch the torchlight and throw it back. She looks like the city expects the gods to wear. Her hands are folded. Her mouth moves with the kind of decision that is heavier than spoken law.
Thaddeus speaks from the steps—silk that tries to be steel.
Thaddeus (commanding): "We will return light to the city by burning its shadow."
His voice is small in my bones. He says it like a patient man. But the patient has already chosen the blade. He has groomed the crowd to want a simple thing: proof, and then action. Proof will come later. For now, the crowd needs a body to burn.
I lie to myself and call the balcony a safe place. They bind me with ritual and not with rope. The harness holds me as a careful thing, iron away from skin, a ward between hands and blood. My face is still marked with old spray—Cassian's blood dried into a smear that people have kept like a relic. It will not wash away in words.
(Thinking: I did not smile when he died. I was strapped into the harness. But the mark stayed. For them, the mark is enough.)
Marcelline steps forward. She carries the weight of a sentence in her chest and lets it out like air.
Marcelline (clear, cold): "He must die."
The words fall with the same slow certainty as a bell. They land. For a moment, the crowd is breathless. The people want that simpler story: a demon among them, a single hand to point at. It is quieter to have an enemy than to bear the slow, daily things that broke their lives.
!("Burn the tools of corruption! Burn the false pens!")
The chorus rises again and covers the space between my ribs and my mouth. The crowd speaks as one, and the sound is not music. It is a blade being whet.
I look down at the pile of burning invoices, the small things the apprentices handled: receipts that kept a roof over someone's head, a contract that meant a child's bread for the week. The flames do not care. Fire is not judgment, it is a very efficient destroyer. People clap. Some cry. A woman tucks a charred scrap into her bundle as if relics were proof.
Varena watches the fire close, then turns away, shoulders straight. Odrik counts coins in a face that looks like appetite. The Temple's pamphlet—The Ashes of Mercer—already circulates in people's hands, it sings of sin in the simplest lines.
!("Mercer's ink is the mirror of blasphemy!")
Pope Thaddeus stands to one side, velvet over an iron spine. He does not shout, he needs no shout. He lets the crowd find their hunger and then gives them the shape of law.
Thaddeus (cold): "Order. We will not make a rash ending. The Temple must show resolve."
I could feel the sigil in his collar like a tremor in the room. He touches it the way a man touches a weapon when he's ready to use it. I have seen him move a crowd into a knife's direction before. He has learned how to speak soft and watch panic do the hard work. His mind is a ledger.
(Thinking: He is afraid. Fear skates behind his words. He wants to act quicker than inquiry will allow.)
They have been careful not to say "monster" in a way that boxes the city into a single direction—yet. But the intent is clear. The rumor eats faster than law when the city wants proof. The elders pace in the wings. They have told Marcelline she will be called soft if she resists. She is young and the weight of name matters.
I smile.
It is the only thing left that I can give them without violence. The smile is quiet, almost private. I have learned what a smile will do in a room stacked with judgment: it is small and useless and strange. It makes them angrier.
I say what I have been shaping in my head for a long while, voice steady enough for them to hear if the crowd had not decided to eat my words.
Me (soft): "If this is faith, I hope it keeps your hands warm."
My voice drops. The crowd roars back. They drown me with a thousand small sounds: cheers, jeers, and the sound of cheap virtue being made.
!("Burn the demon! Burn the shadow!")
The shout swallows the last of my words like a knife swallowing cloth. For them, my sentence is already written. The Temple will keep the shape of law and the people will take comfort in that form. The truth, whatever it is, will be buried under ash.
(Thinking: The Mandate sits in a house I cannot touch. The seven‑day Resonant Cycle passed months ago — the Domain will only reach for me if I die or am dragged near death. That is the only way back. I will not trade my life for logs. I will build proof with hands and witnesses. The Temple gives me a trial, and the crowd will do the rest.)
The bells ring. The world tilts toward the inevitable. The harness hums low, the ward under my collar singing like teeth. People toss tokens—bits of rope, a scrap of leather, a broken nib—onto the pyre and it eats them. Some of my men stood in the crowd earlier: Aidan at the edge with ledger clenched, eyes hollow with future debts. Apprentices hold themselves in the square, as if too young to be heavy with this kind of law.
Marcelline's eyes find mine for a second. She does not look hateful, she looks like a knife that cannot unsheathe itself. The rest of her face is a shield. I have seen her pray until her hands bled, I have seen the private place where her certainty cracks. Tonight, she holds the line.
Marcelline (quiet): "We will not allow rumor to undo order. We will bring witnesses and proof."
The crowd calms a degree, but the embers still blaze and some anger will not die with a sentence. The Temple has granted patience and the patience is thin.
(Thinking: I am not sure whether she believes the same thing as the elders. She is young, but dangerous. She has the kind of faith that can be a ladder or a trap.)
When the priests lower me from the balcony into the harness again, the crowd parts. Some press forward to touch the shadow of me. They will take souvenir blood, a relic of a face that did not burn. A child—clearly a younger brother, clutching the hem of his mother's coat—stares at my face like it is a story he has been told too quickly.
A woman presses a scrap of cloth to my sleeve and kisses it. She leaves the scrap in her bundle like a talisman. The city wants proof, and proof is made from small things.
I lie still. I practice patience as if patience were a muscle.
(Thinking: I chose Safe from Wounds to keep skin whole. I thought it would make things simple. It did not. It made me uncanny.)
The crowd goes home with ash in their hair and a new hymn in their mouths. The market will be quieter tomorrow in ways that matter. Some men will think twice about taking a job that might be cursed. Some families will close their doors. The city rationalizes danger the same way it rationalizes taxes: something small and continuous, shared among many.
I watch as the last of the embers die and the cathedral steps grow empty. The square smells of old paper and fear. I keep the harness as still as a thing that can be still. The ward keeps me conscious and intact. Men will say I was spared by miracle or trick. The story will choose the easiest path.
(Thinking: Stories find their own truth. I have tools to shape reality, but not the logs I need. The Space House keeps my receipts from me. So I will have to make proof in the old way: facts, witnesses, and careful ritual.)
05:30 p.m. - At Cathedral Courtyard, Dawnspire.
It rains on the evening before the execution. The sky is the kind of grey that makes torches look heroic. The city keeps its flames, people will not let wet soil steal their justice. The crowd is smaller than the day before but more determined. They hold their candles like small suns.
The Temple has printed a new pamphlet overnight. The title is the sort of thing meant to end argument: The Ashes of Mercer. It reads like a sermon in a pamphlet. It lists sins in short lines. It prints the smear on my face like scripture. The pamphlet moves fast, a dozen hands already have copies.
!("We have seen the sign. Burn what must be burned!")
Marcelline walks among the clerks and acolytes with a white slip in one hand—a ticket of sorts, sanctified by the Temple's rituals. She knows what tomorrow will require. For a moment, I see weight behind her face. It is not an actor's weight, it is the weight of a person who must do something that will mark her the rest of her life.
Marcelline (quiet): "Sometimes I wonder if the gods answer, or if we are only echoing our own fear."
Her voice is thin and not meant to be heard. The slip in her hand is folded like a small flag. She will be the one to set the torch by her own hands.
(Thinking: She will light the flame. She thinks she is saving the city.)
Rain makes faces shine. Varena stands under a market awning, ledger closed. Odrik tries to make deals in whispers and barters reputation with a voice that smells of money. The crowd is a band of ordinary men and women who found a night to believe in action.
Inside the cathedral—where the sentences are written and kept—priests move like clerks at a slow, deliberate pace. Thaddeus sits in a carved chair, the sigil in his collar catching the lamplight. He does not look triumphant. He looks nervous. He needs the execution quicker than inquiry can give it.
Thaddeus (soft, persuasive): "We will be careful. But speed is sometimes the mercy of prudence."
He says it as if it were a law of statecraft and not a confession of panic. He has reasons I do not fully understand. He keeps his fingers where only he sees them. If fear is a ledger, he counts loss in ways the rest of us cannot.
(Thinking: He is afraid for his position. Fear makes men sharp and cruel. He will hurry things because he is afraid of what inquiry might reveal.)
People who know Technologia have come tonight in more private lines: a few of my craftsmen, their hands still smelling of oil, standing in the back like they prefer their shame quiet. Aidan is there, ledger in hand. He never raises his head. There is a small group of us who know the truth—the apprentices, a few craftsmen—standing like a family funeral party. Many of us look like a younger brother and a younger sister to one another, more than employees: we have shared bread and late nights together.
Aidan (measured): "Keep the books. Hold the creditors. We will not let this ruin the men."
He says it without drama. He has been the steadiness in an unsteady place. I can feel the ledger that he keeps trying to balance the wrath of the city against the wages of men who need roofs.
(Thinking: If the shop dies, thirty people lose their wages. I am responsible for that in part. I chose a tool I did not fully understand. I cannot forgive myself easily.)
The pamphlets have already done their work. They have made my name into a symbol. People only need a symbol to be certain. It is easier than thinking.
The rain is steady now. Torches smoke and the crowd huddles under umbrellas and awnings, not willing to leave their justice to weather. This is not about mercy or evidence anymore. It is about making the past small and final. If you can set a fire, you make the world feel cleaner.
!("Light the pyre! Let the city be whole!")
I have thought a lot about what I did and why. I think about the choices in the Space House like a man counting coins by feel in a dark pocket. They are both blessing and burden. I chose Safe from Wounds once thinking it would protect me. Safe from the Red Moon and Safe from Doubt are other stones I have set down along the path. When Cassian fell apart in the hall, I was in a harness and the Mandate acted the way it wanted to. It answered categories in its own cold language.
(Thinking: I can't call the House on demand. The Resonant Cycle ran out months ago — the only way into the Domain now is through death or a near‑death pull. My logs wait behind a grave. I will not court that fate. The Mandate acts like weather at times, I must learn its moods by testing, witnesses, and ritual, not by waiting for a miracle.)
I know the truth about Gin, Barden, and Lyss. Their faces come back to me like a bad log in a program I cannot purge. They died because this world is cruel and because I was careless in ways I did not understand at the time. They were my shield and my sword and now they are gone. I blame myself for that, even if some of their choices put them in danger. Blame lives easy in a chest.
(Thinking: They left this world because of the arc I set in motion. I cannot unmake that. I can only build proof, make alliances, and survive long enough to undo what can be undone.)
I do not feel righteous anger. There is a quiet in me—like a man who knows the first cut is not the end. I smile sometimes because if you cannot laugh at a universe that threw you off a bus stop once, you will not survive its jokes. This smile is not mockery, it is a small, tired machine of acceptance.
A courier slips me a folded note under a guard's ear. It says there are supporters—quiet, private, faithful men who will try to keep the public heat from burning the shop down too. They will move stock, write receipts, hide tools. They won't be loud. They will be lawyers and merchants and small, useful thieves who know how to move things without asking forgiveness.
(Thinking: That is what I need. Not miracles. People who will do the small work of keeping roofs over heads.)
The priests come in their slow way. They measure the hour with ritual. The ticket in Marcelline's hand will be used to bless the flame. They have prepared an iron brazier. They will call it a holy instrument. They will take the highest road by paper and prayer and say the city is saved.
I look at Marcelline as she goes to the brazier with the ticket. Her face is a poem of conflict. For a second she closes her eyes and I think she might say something else. She strikes the flint and lifts the torch. Her hand is steady.
Marcelline (soft): "For the city's safety. For the Staglord's light."
She steps forward and touches the torch to the prepared pyre. The flames take.
(Thinking: She lights it herself. She wants to be the one who cleanses. She thinks the gods would approve.)
The sky answers with rain and the flames answer with a steady burn. The pamphlets feed the fire. The crowd watches with a hunger that always seems holy in public and base in private. People whisper about demons and omens. They do not see how their certainty is the real beast here—the thing that eats nuance and replaces it with a neat, burning story.
Pope Thaddeus stands aside and watches the flames climb. He is a man with hands hidden in his collar, a man who has always liked soft orders. He needed this to move fast. He will speak of order in the morning and of mercy when the heat is convenient.
(Thinking: The real demon is not the man they burn. It is the thought that they can burn a problem and call it fixed. They will not ask why the problem exists. They will simply look for a scapegoat next time.)
The courtyard smells of rain and smoke. I can taste petrol and old solder—my past and their future. The manual of Technologia lies in my head like a burned page—what we made, for whom, the apprentices who bent metal and learned to dream with steel nibs. They will survive only if someone fights for them. I will fight in the slow, legal ways I can.
I am not naive. The execution tomorrow will be quick. The crowd will go home thinking the city is safer. Thaddeus will sleep easier. Marcelline will have made a hard choice and carry the scar of it like a medal.
(Thinking: I cannot change what they will do tonight. I can only make sure the small people who trusted me have bread tomorrow. I can only keep working for those who stayed.)
I lay back in the harness in the dim light of the cell and watch the rain map the stone. The ward hums. Outside, the city tells itself a clean story. Inside, I keep my ledger like a prayer. I will not go to the house too easily. The cooldown has expired. Death is the key. I refuse. I live and fight for the living longer.
I close my eyes and let a small, private smile take me. It is not for them. It is not for their flames. It is for an idea that is stubborn and ugly and honest: I am not finished yet.
(Thinking: This is only the beginning.)