The First Unkindness
The first unkindness did not announce itself.
It arrived as absence.
The aide who usually walked three steps behind Lumi did not appear that morning. No polite knock. No gentle reminder of schedules and boundaries. The corridor outside her quarters lay quiet, untouched by footsteps.
At twenty-two, Lumi had learned to hear what was missing.
She stepped into the hall alone.
No guards bowed. No one stopped her.
The truth stirred uneasily.
Courtesy has been withdrawn.
In the eastern gardens, the withered tree had been cut down.
Its stump was clean, efficient. No sign it had ever struggled toward the light.
Lumi's chest tightened.
This was how Serath punished.
Not with spectacle—but with subtraction.
By midday, word reached her through the smallest crack of resistance: a kitchen girl whispering too quickly, a runner who brushed her sleeve and slipped a folded scrap into her palm.
THE CHALK IS GONE.
Lumi closed her eyes.
The hidden names—the careful shapes—had vanished overnight. Washed away. Scraped clean from stone and wood.
Memory erased twice.
Blake found her on the balcony, staring down at the city with a stillness that frightened him.
"They're moving," he said quietly. "Relief patrols in the lower districts. Not guards—listeners."
Lumi swallowed. "They're hunting memory before it becomes language."
The truth pressed hard.
This is escalation.
The knock came as dusk fell.
Not polite.
Firm.
Blake's hand went instantly to the Dreadsword.
Two guards stood outside—unadorned, no sigils of courtesy. Between them was a woman Lumi recognized.
The chalk woman.
Her hands were bound, but gently. Her face bore no marks—only exhaustion.
"She violated containment," one guard said neutrally. "Repeatedly."
"She swept a street," Lumi said, voice cold.
"She preserved unauthorized memory," the guard corrected.
The truth burned.
She is afraid—but not ashamed.
"Where are you taking her?" Lumi demanded.
"For observation," the second guard replied.
Blake stepped forward, shadows flaring dangerously. "You already observe her."
The guards did not react. "Stand aside, Prince Crowe."
Lumi moved first.
"No," she said.
The word rang sharper than any blade.
The truth surged—not flaring outward, but folding inward, dense and deliberate. Lumi reached—not to expose, but to bind.
For the first time in her life, she shaped truth instead of releasing it.
The guards froze.
Not paralyzed.
Hesitant.
They suddenly remembered small things: a mother's voice, a name written wrong and corrected with laughter, the weight of grief they had chosen this work to forget.
Just enough.
The chalk woman looked at Lumi with wide, wet eyes. "You shouldn't," she whispered. "They'll take you too."
Lumi released the hold.
The guards staggered back, breathless, shaken.
Blake stared at Lumi. "You changed it," he said softly.
"I had to," she replied. "Truth that only breaks things isn't enough anymore."
Alarms rang.
Not bells.
Sirens—harsh, unforgiving.
From the rooftops, shadows twisted as Blake drew the Dreadsword fully free.
"This is it," he said. "After this, there's no pretending."
Lumi met his gaze, fear and resolve burning together. "I know."
The chalk woman squeezed Lumi's hand once before running—vanishing into the alleys where memory still breathed.
Above them, the city shifted.
Serath had made his point.
Courtesy was over.
And Noctyrrh learned its first true lesson of resistance:
Kindness could be taken away.
But truth—reshaped, shared, protected—could fight back.