Lucien's world tilted—not with noise, but with silence.
The kind of silence that bled behind the eyes.
He stood in the center of his own scene, crafted with such precision, and watched it fracture in slow, deliberate slices. Not a sudden collapse. No. It was worse than that.
It was a symphony unraveling by the note.
The whispers didn't slice. They corroded—soft and persistent, like rot in polished wood.
And Lucien… didn't know how to stop it.
His fingers clenched once.
Then again.
Too tight. Too still.
Because for the first time, he couldn't recalibrate. Couldn't reset the tempo.
There's always a way. That was the mantra. The truth engraved into his spine by tutors, handlers, the Father himself.
But not this time.
His mind searched for it.
Desperately.
A new angle. A redirection. A scapegoat, a technicality, something.
But it all slid through his fingers.
Every calculation unraveled by a single impossibility.
A Recorder.
