The Outer Stair settles into stillness. Blue ward-light rests across the intact orders and Bren's scorched duplicate, preserving both without judgment.
Sil'Thalis has space to rest while Marek sits one step below the records, his breathing even now. Bren remains beside the open ward, watching its light touch the damaged copy.
Bren
I thought preservation meant keeping truth safe. Now I wonder if it can become another way to control it, deciding what must remain and what no one may question.
Marek
Orders taught me to mistake possession for certainty. If the record belonged to my superiors, I treated their version as the only one worth carrying.
Bren
The ward does not ask us to make the evidence clean. It asks us to leave the break visible.
Bren
Perhaps witnessing is less about guarding the truth than making room for it to outlast our claims. What do you think should be written beside this loss?