The city of Nareth stood at the edge of a scar. Not a physical one, but a wound etched into time—a place where memory had festered under golden banners and prayer-soaked streets. Kael could feel it the moment he entered. Unlike the cities that had erupted in chaos after the fall of the Divine Accord, Nareth was calm. Too calm.
People smiled politely.
They bowed with precision.
Their streets were spotless, their temples polished, their prayers sung in perfect cadence.
It was unnatural.
Artificial.
Manufactured.
He walked beneath towering archways carved with the name Zareth the Just, the city's founding ruler. Every wall bore his image: a tall, regal man with eyes of mercy and hands raised as if to bless. Yet Kael's Archive pulsed with something different. The truth here didn't rest—it screamed.
At the heart of Nareth stood the Obelisk of Light, a monolith built in Zareth's honor. It gleamed in the afternoon sun, its mirrored surface reflecting everything except the truth.
Kael approached it slowly. The people watched but didn't interfere. Their faces were smooth, unreadable—masks molded over generations.
He placed a hand on the Obelisk.
And the memories poured in.
Not the golden visions the city worshipped—but blood.
Chains.
Fire.
Zareth had not been just.
He had been a tyrant.
A god-killer in disguise.
He had wiped out tribes, rewritten laws to criminalize dissent, executed scholars who dared record the real history. And when the gods came for him, he made a pact with silence—offering their names to oblivion in exchange for immortality through memory control.
The Archive within Kael twisted.
Zareth's reign was not just remembered—it was weaponized.
Kael turned as the city's High Priest approached, dressed in silver-threaded robes, his smile gentle but cold.
"We are honored by your presence, Archivist."
Kael studied him. "You know who I am. And you know why I'm here."
"Of course." The priest folded his hands. "But surely you understand. Some truths do not heal. They shatter."
Kael's jaw clenched. "And you built your peace atop bones."
The priest tilted his head, as if Kael were a child who hadn't grasped something simple.
"Our people are happy."
"They are blind."
"They are safe."
"Because they've been taught to love their cage."
The priest's smile wavered.
"You would tear it all down? For what? Justice? Truth? Do you even know what that looks like anymore?"
Kael stepped past him, toward the Obelisk. "I don't need to tear anything down."
He raised his hand.
"I just need to let them see."
The Obelisk cracked.
Just once.
A hairline fracture, but the sound echoed through the city like a war cry. Light spilled from it—not golden, but red and black, visions of the truth long suppressed.
People screamed.
Others stood frozen.
Children watched as the face of Zareth the Just flickered—and beneath the illusion, they saw him: a man with bloodied hands, standing over ash, smiling.
The High Priest shouted, "He's desecrating our salvation! Stop him!"
But no one moved.
Because deep inside, the people already knew.
The old woman whose grandfather vanished during Zareth's census.
The boy whose family name was erased from the records.
The merchant whose maps always stopped short at the "unremembered lands."
They had lived with this lie too long.
Kael lowered his hand.
"Truth doesn't ask for forgiveness," he said. "It demands choice."
He turned to leave—but one voice stopped him.
A girl.
Maybe twelve.
Eyes wide. Holding her mother's hand.
"Was he really that bad?" she asked.
Kael looked at her.
"Yes."
She bit her lip. "But he made this city."
Kael nodded. "He did."
"But he hurt people."
"He did."
"So… what do we do now?"
Kael paused.
And for the first time in days, he smiled.
"You remember him."
The girl blinked. "Why?"
"So you don't become him."
The Obelisk stood cracked but not shattered. Like a lie exposed but not yet defeated. Kael remained beneath it, watching as the city stirred. The visions had vanished, but their echo lingered in the people's eyes. The silence that had ruled Nareth for centuries was crumbling—not with screams, but with something far more dangerous: thought.
The High Priest had vanished into the shadows of the temple, his silver robes now irrelevant. His voice, once absolute, was gone. No one followed him.
Instead, they turned to one another.
They asked questions.
They shared stories.
They remembered.
Kael sat on the edge of the temple steps, cloak curled around him like the last warmth of winter. The girl who had spoken to him earlier now stood among others, repeating what she had heard. Her words weren't angry. They were curious. Alive. And others listened.
A group of masons approached the Obelisk the next morning. They bore no tools of destruction—only brushes, chisels, and ink. The city had voted. Not by decree, not by force, but by gathering.
They would not tear the monument down.
They would transform it.
They scrubbed Zareth's face from its surface.
And beneath the false bronze and holy engravings, they began to carve the truth: names of the people he had erased. Scenes of the battles he had hidden. Words that once would have brought death now etched boldly into stone.
Kael watched, unspeaking, as a boy no older than ten painted a mural of a burning library beside the obelisk. A flame, yes—but inside it, books that refused to turn to ash. The boy said nothing, but when he finished, he looked at Kael and nodded.
Kael nodded back.
Aesthera arrived two days later, her cloak dusted with the grit of travel. She didn't ask if Kael was ready to leave—only sat beside him on the steps, eyes on the Obelisk.
"They're doing it," she said after a while.
"Piece by piece," Kael replied.
She tilted her head. "You look… tired."
"I am."
A pause.
"But satisfied?"
Kael looked at the people painting truth over lies, not with vengeance, but with resolve.
"Yes."
Reyan joined them hours later, hands dirtied from helping rebuild the temple's outer wall. "You could've destroyed it, you know."
"I know," Kael said.
"But you didn't."
"Because sometimes," Kael replied slowly, "it's not about erasing the past. It's about making sure no one forgets what it really was."
Reyan chuckled. "You're starting to sound like a philosopher."
Kael raised a brow. "I've been called worse."
Night fell.
The Obelisk, once lit with holy light, now glowed with torches and lanterns placed by the people. They sat beneath it—not to pray, but to tell stories. Some true. Some exaggerated. But none forbidden.
A child asked his father who Zareth really was. The father hesitated, then said, "He was a man. He did great things. He did terrible things. And we remember both."
Kael's eyes stung at that. Not from pain. From hope.
Aesthera noticed and smiled.
"So what now?"
Kael stood slowly, stretching the stiffness from his shoulders.
"There's another city. Another monument. Another buried name."
Reyan groaned. "You really don't stop."
"Memory doesn't," Kael replied. "And neither can we."
The three of them stood together, watching as Nareth—once chained by silence—breathed freely for the first time in centuries.
Kael looked up at the stars.
They were the same ones that had shone over him when he was still divine. But now, they looked clearer. Not because he was higher—but because he had fallen far enough to see the world without illusion.
And that made all the difference.