The sun painted the clearing with warmth it had not earned.
Gold touched leaf and bark, softened the violence of the scene, and made the mud look—if not harmless—then at least domesticated. As though daylight itself were an argument against urgency.
With what we had done, with what had been said, help was on the way.
That was the story being told now.
That was the revision.
"Officer," I began, too quickly, eager in the way people are when they believe explanation is the same thing as resolution. "We think we've identified the cause."
The mud had settled into stillness.
Not retreat—poise.
It watched us the way a shoreline watches the tide pull back, knowing it will return.
The officers did not approach it. They regarded it with professional caution, hands near hilts, eyes narrowed—not in fear, but in assessment.
This was not a miracle to them.
It was a situation.
"What are you people doing here?" one demanded. His hand was already closed around the grip of his sword.
"Gentlemen," Mr. Lucius said smoothly, stepping half a pace forward, "and lady—we were concerned by the incident. My guest asked to be of aid."
His tone carried no urgency, no alarm. It was the voice of someone speaking to history
after it has already decided what will be remembered.
Ezra poured water into porcelain cups as though this were an afternoon visit. Steam rose faintly. Civility, deployed like insulation.
I glanced at Heiwa. She remained seated, spine straight, hands resting around her weapon—not threatening, not relaxed. Ready in the way mountains are ready.
"Is that correct, miss?" one officer asked me. His pupils narrowed, silted like a cat's or snake's. Waiting.
I did not answer at once.
"I believe," I said carefully, "this is the result of someone weaponising a myth."
The word landed poorly.
"A… weaponised myth?" the officer repeated. He gestured for his men to lower their weapons—not because he believed me, but because he did not. "Explain."
"Heiwa attempted freezing," I continued, gesturing toward her. "It had no effect."
Heiwa's gaze did not leave the officer's face.
"A myth would require a referent," he said, adjusting his glasses as murmurs rippled behind him. "Some kind of cultural anchor."
"I am Ayaan," he added after a moment. "And you?"
"Heiwa," she replied, without moving. "Was the city evacuated?"
He nodded. Then looked to me.
"Victoria," I said—then faltered, the weight of the city suddenly present in my chest. "Were there casualties?"
"Not beyond the original incidents," he said. "So. You were about to identify the myth?"
"Yes." I hesitated and looked to Mr. Lucius.
He lifted his teacup, serenely unconcerned. Permission without endorsement.
"It's Cain and Abel," I said. "That is the myth being used."
I waited.
Nothing happened.
"Who?" Officer Ayaan asked, genuinely puzzled. "Cain and… Abel?"
I looked around.
Blank faces. Polite confusion. No recognition. No resonance.
The name meant nothing here.
"But Cain and Abel don't explain the silver," Mr. Lucius said mildly, like a man pointing out an accounting error. "Nor the structure of the deaths."
The earlier mention of money echoed—thirty pieces. The sun climbed higher. Sweat traced a line down my spine.
I opened my mouth to argue—then stopped.
Something clicked, cold and exact.
Cain and Abel had never been *the* myth.
They were a rewrite.
A moral overlay—simplified until it could fit in a sermon.
"I was wrong," I said quietly.
The forest seemed to lean in.
"Whatever this is, Cain and Abel was already its alibi."
My voice shook now—not with fear, but with recognition. "That story was already a revision. The ground crying out, the blood speaking—that was the palimpsest. Not the source."
Heiwa's hand settled on my shoulder. Steady. Anchoring.
"I appreciate your help," Officer Ayaan said after a pause. "But this is now a matter for the city. You should return somewhere safe."
The words hit harder than any threat.
Containment.
Redaction.
Cold water, poured with care.
"The silver—" I began, then stopped. "We've done what we can. We should go."
The mud had not moved. It had not needed to.
It waited—
like something written over too many times
to stay buried.
I looked at it one last time, at the way it clung to the earth like memory refusing erasure, and thought—not for the first time—how easily truth returns to dust when no one remembers how to read it.
As we reached the edge of the forest, the sound of the officers barking orders faded into the hum of the trees.
"They are so eager to 'contain' it," Mr. Lucius mused, his cane clicking rhythmically against a stone.
"They think if they put a fence around the mud, they have solved the debt. It's a very... human delusion."
"And what is the non-human solution?" I asked, my voice still hollow from the realization.
"To recognize that the fence is just another thing for the mud to own," he replied.
"One does not 'contain' a Law, Victoria. One either fulfills it, or one is erased by it."