The Unasked Question
The message arrived without seal or signature, slipped among routine reports like an afterthought.
When will you stop listening?
Iria read it twice.
The want reacted instantly—sharp, defensive. It wanted reassurance, a denial, a promise of permanence.
She folded the paper and set it aside.
The question followed her through the day.
It echoed in the council chamber when debates circled without landing. It hummed beneath conversations in the streets, in the sideways glances of people who no longer knew whether to bring problems to her—or solve them themselves.
Listening, she realized, had become its own kind of power.
And power, even used gently, always asked to be relinquished eventually.
That evening, Iria convened a meeting she hadn't planned to hold so soon.
Not with the council.
With the mediators.
They gathered in a disused lecture hall, chairs mismatched, notes scrawled in different hands. Ordinary people, most of whom had never imagined themselves in this role.
"You won't need me forever," Iria told them.
The room stilled.
"That's not humility," one of them said cautiously. "That's abdication."
"No," Iria replied. "It's transition."
She laid out her concern plainly: if everything flowed through her, even listening would become a bottleneck. A single point of failure disguised as care.
"What do you want from us?" another asked.
"Capacity," Iria said. "Redundancy. The ability to disagree without appealing upward."
Some nodded. Others looked terrified.
"People trust you," someone said.
"They trust what I represent," Iria answered. "And that has to outgrow me."
The want pulsed—uneasy, almost mournful.
After the meeting, Kael found her alone, staring at the city lights.
"You're planning your own irrelevance," he said.
"Yes."
"And how does that feel?"
She considered. "Like grief. And relief."
He smiled faintly. "You're good at this part."
"Letting go?"
"Knowing when to."
The unasked question lingered in the air between them.
When will you stop listening?
Iria looked out over Noctyrrh—not as a single voice anymore, but a layered chorus learning how to hear itself.
"Not yet," she said softly. "But someday soon… I won't need to listen so loudly."
The want eased, not in satisfaction, but in acceptance.
Because the most dangerous leaders were the ones who never imagined an end to their own necessity.
And Iria, at last, was beginning to imagine one.