The café was modest. Chalkboard menus. Mismatched chairs. Walls pinned with art from local youth. Caelum entered without spells, cloaked only in anonymity. No one looked up. No one whispered his name. And that—somehow—felt like grace.
At the center table, a teacher spoke to a dozen teens.
She held a copy of the Quiet Creed. Dog-eared. Scribbled on. And beside it—a notebook filled with revisions.
"We're not replacing history," she said. "We're responding to it."
One student raised her hand. "Was Caelum Dross real?"
The teacher smiled. "Real enough to inspire. Real enough to disappoint. Real enough to teach us how not to forget."
They passed around rewritten passages—each marked not by authorship, but experience. One said:
"Power should never be the loudest voice in the room."
Another:
"The myth was necessary. The man was flawed. We are neither—we are choosing."
Caelum watched.
He didn't intervene.
Didn't correct.
Just listened.
Outside, the devil leaned against a lamppost, flipping through a journal.
"It's brave," she said. "Letting them finish your sentence."
He stepped outside. "It was never mine to finish."
She grinned. "Oh, darling. You're evolving."
Caelum didn't answer.
Instead, he looked back through the café window—where truth danced across the pages he no longer wrote.
And for the first time, he didn't need to.