Dominion, Starving
The city was unraveling.
Kaelen Veyra ran through the narrow arteries of the East District, where desperation was thick as the smog. Holo-feeds blinked overhead with cheerful propaganda, but the ground told a different story: children fainting against cold walls, mothers clutching empty ration cards, old men begging with trembling hands.
"Master Veyra!" a gaunt woman clutched at him, shaking. "My boy hasn't eaten in three days. They said you'd fix this!"
Kaelen froze. He wanted to say he could. He wanted to promise. But the warehouses were dry, the convoys late, the Council deaf. All he could manage was a hollow, "Hold on. Please… just hold on."
Behind him, two engineers bickered.
"We can't reroute what doesn't exist," one spat.
"Then lie to them!" the other hissed. "Buy time!"
Kaelen silenced them with a glare, but doubt gnawed him raw. Honesty and effort were turning him into a public fool.
The crowd's anger grew, jeers rising like sparks. And then—
The wagons came.
Massive, covered in tarps, creaking through rain-slick streets. When the cloths were torn away, mountains of grain, fruit, and meat gleamed beneath torchlight. The starving gasped, then roared.
Ashira Valen stood tall on the lead wagon, draped in crimson silk against the gray drizzle. Her voice cut like glass:
"Dominion, you will not starve tonight."
Baskets were lowered, food poured into desperate arms. Children cheered, mothers wept, men pressed their foreheads to her boots. And Kaelen—once their savior—was shoved aside in the frenzy, invisible.
"Kaelen promised," someone muttered. "But she delivered."
He felt the words like knives.
The Chamber of Discord
Chaos reigned inside the obsidian hall.
"Where in the Void did she get such stores?" Councilor Marrec's face was crimson with rage. "Valen undermines our authority!"
Across the table, Councilor Thedra leaned forward, eyes like blades. "Or perhaps she exposes our negligence."
Ashira sat serene amid the storm.
"I did what had to be done. While you debated, Dominion starved. I will not apologize for feeding my people."
Marrec snarled, "They are not your people—"
But Thedra interrupted smoothly: "And yet tonight they eat with her name on their lips."
Ashira let the silence stretch, then added in a low voice:
"A city that feeds remembers. A city that starves revolts. Which legacy do you prefer?"
Even Thedra, sharp-eyed as she was, said nothing more.
Seeds of Famine
Weeks earlier, Ashira had begun her quiet work.
She had bribed guild captains with promises of trade monopolies, arranged "accidents" that delayed the convoys, and funneled supplies into hidden granaries beneath her estates. Hungry mouths multiplied, not from fate but from her design.
Every step was a calculation. Every delay a seed of rage. And when famine peaked, she revealed herself as savior.
Did she feel guilt as children withered on the streets? Perhaps. But power required a theater of need—and she had written the script with merciless precision.
The Night of Bread and Chains
The night stretched into frenzy. Her wagons rolled from district to district, each arrival a miracle. By dawn, guild unions pledged loyalty, guard captains bowed their heads, and merchants whispered her name with reverence.
Kaelen walked among the same streets, watching scraps of bread pass into small hands—bread not his to give. Where once he inspired hope, now only pity lingered.
A fellow engineer murmured, "They cheer her now, Kaelen. They've forgotten you."
Kaelen's fists clenched. He wanted to scream, I never lied to them. But honesty was no crown in Dominion.
The Balcony of Shadows
On her balcony, the city sprawled below, still humming with her name. Rain pattered soft against the stone.
She spoke to the night:
"Let them think me cruel. History does not count hunger—it counts power. Tonight, Dominion fed, and Dominion remembers."
Her voice cracked for a moment, barely audible.
"But the faces… the children I starved to reach this stage… they will remember too."
Her reflection in the glass looked like a stranger. Savior and butcher, wrapped into one.
The Oracle's Whisper
The rain hissed louder, though the air was still.
And then, like a voice from the marrow of the city itself:
"You have written hunger into memory, Ashira Valen. Remember this—hungry bellies forgive when fed, but hungry hearts do not. From those you starved may rise fangs sharpened by your cruelty. And they will remember the name of their feast-giver… and their famine-maker."
The whisper faded, leaving only silence.
Ashira closed her eyes. A queen in everything but crown—and a monster in everything but truth.