Twilight slanted across the Grand Cathedral plaza like a tempered blade. Fires burned in shallow iron basins, their crackle underscored by the shuffling hush of hundreds. No banner rose, no drumbeat marked victory. Citizens wore linen patched with grief, eyes rimmed red not from smoke but from the shock of stillness after endless screams.
The pyre loomed on sandstone steps—three relics atop stacked cedar. The Queen's moon-white coronet, pronged like frozen lightning; Kassia's mirror blade, hairline fractures webbing its length so lamplight refracted in crooked rainbows; Ara's twisted gauntlet, runes dark as dried blood. They looked small, almost fragile, dwarfed by the world they had once controlled.
