It began with paint.
Not fire, not weapons. Just streaks of crimson across the stone walls of Parliament—lines slashed in patterns that looked like veins, or perhaps words written in a language lost to grief.
The Mirror Rebels had stopped hiding.
Across the city, buildings wore truth like scars. Old doctrine quotes were altered, phrases twisted into confessions:
"Obedience is peace." → "Obedience is theft."
"We shape reality." → "We suppress memory."
"Caelum Dross gave us purpose." → "Caelum Dross forgot his own."
Murals bloomed of masked faces holding candles—not weapons. Poems surfaced in subways. Children recited lessons rewritten in real-time by anonymous educators who no longer followed the Quiet Creed.
Caelum watched from above.
Not as ruler.
As myth.
And myth was now being dissected, lovingly, savagely.
Eland—the architect of networks—entered Caelum's chamber, face pale. "They're encrypting resistance into our own algorithms. Subtle. Undetectable until it reaches policy."
Caelum read one transmission.
"The truth was never yours. You borrowed it. And now we're asking for it back."
The Whisper Parliament argued strategy. Countermeasures. Silence spells. Propaganda surges.
Caelum said nothing.
Because silence was no longer safety.
It was rebellion.
The devil didn't speak that night. She merely watched. And for once, Caelum wondered if she admired what he couldn't control.