The wind crawled low through the Dust District, sweeping ash into the cracks between cobblestones. Midday light bled weakly through the clouds, just enough to cast the broken market stalls in bruised shadow. The square should have been loud – hawkers shouting, wheels clattering, guards barking orders.

But it was quiet.

Too quiet.

Then he stumbled in.

Barefoot. Bloodied. One sleeve torn clean off, arm wrapped in a makeshift bandage already soaked through. His eyes were wild – cracked glass held together by will alone. People turned. Stared. Someone called out, but he didn't stop.

He walked to the centre of the square, shoulders hunched, breathing like every step hurt. Then he stopped. Faced the stone mural of King Tomas – the one carved into the wall above the prayer post, halo glowing faint gold even now.

He lifted his head.

"He was chained," he rasped.

Silence. Just the wind.

The man's voice cracked, but he forced it out again.

"The Flame Father. He was chained. In the Cathedral. Like an animal. Tomas put him there."

A wagon paused mid-roll. A trio of street kids hiding beneath a stall peeked out, wide-eyed. A vendor dropped her cutting board. It clattered against the stone and no one picked it up.

People stirred.

A woman holding a child stepped back. An old butcher dropped his carving blade onto the stall bench. It thudded once and rolled off.

No one spoke.

Then another voice, soft but sharp: "He healed me."

A woman in healer's robes stepped forward, pushing up her sleeve. Her hand was perfect – new skin, clean lines. Too perfect.

"My hand was gone. Two days ago. I woke up today and it was back. Golden light. I thought it was a dream."

More heads turned now. Someone murmured a prayer. But it faltered halfway through.

"Someone escaped," another voice broke in – shaky, high-pitched, desperate. "His name was Victor. From the tunnels. He said… he said they eat us. Feed us to the monsters. That's why they never come back!"

A ripple ran through the crowd. Anger. Disbelief. Fear. But no one denied it.

A tremble passed through the cobblestones beneath their feet – no more than a soft vibration. Far off, a low boom echoed. Distant shouting drifted in from a neighbouring district.

The city was waking up.

A man near the prayer wall reached into his shirt and pulled out his Tomas pendant. His hands were shaking. He stared at it for a long second.

Then he dropped it. Crushed it beneath his boot.

A brittle snap. The sound echoed louder than it should've.

Gasps followed but not in protest. In release.

A few more pendants hit the ground. One child took off the gold-threaded armband that marked him as an "acolyte in training" and quietly threw it into a nearby drain.

Then came the scream.

It wasn't panic. It wasn't warning.

It was grief sharpened into something lethal.

A woman in a tattered shawl stepped forward, fists clenched. "I lost my son to them," she spat. "They said he passed the trial. That he ascended. They lied."

Her eyes locked on the mural above the prayer post.

She picked up a loose stone.

And threw.

The rock struck King Tomas's face dead-centre. Stone cracked. The mural's left eye shattered.

The crowd exhaled.

Someone else picked up a rock.

Then another.

No one shouted. No one led.

But the people moved. Edged forward. Hands curled into fists. Pendants dropped to the ground. Banners torn. Feet shifted, eyes sharpened.

Across the market, a merchant slammed shut his stall and muttered, "I'm done feeding their agents." He handed out rusted cleavers from his butcher rack like weapons.

On a rooftop above, two teenagers lit a stolen Enforcer banner on fire. No one stopped them. A cheer went up – not loud, not wild. Just enough.

In a side alley, someone painted a perfect golden circle on the bricks. Not a word. Just the shape. Just the light.

And on the far edge of the square, an old woman who had never spoken out in her life stepped onto an upturned crate.

"They think we'll beg. That we'll burn each other to keep them warm. But we are done."

The silence didn't break into a roar.

It cracked. Deep. Like a dam beginning to split open.

The shift wasn't clean. It wasn't rehearsed.

But the people moved.

And in that moment – Prague began to rise.

…………………

Tarlov's boots crunched against the gravel as he paced the edge of the checkpoint, sweat running down his collar despite the cold. The line stretched down the cracked road—civilians marked for "trial." Mostly Dust District filth. Quiet. Cowed. Just like always.

He adjusted his helm, barking out the same order he'd given a hundred times this week. "No talking. No questions. You'll be processed. Pray now if you want to be heard."

The line shifted, restless. Someone muttered. Tarlov snapped his baton against the rail.

"I said quiet!"

No one moved.

Then a voice rose – loud and clear. From deep in the queue. Not a shout. A statement.

"We know what happens in those cells."

Tarlov turned. "Who said that?"

Another voice joined. "They said Tomas was a god. But he's not. He's just a puppet."

Heads turned in the crowd. More people looked up. Their eyes weren't downcast anymore.

"The demon Belphegor rules now," someone else called. "And he's afraid. That's why you're still out here."

Tarlov's hand dropped to his sidearm. The other Enforcers tensed, stepping into firing positions. The atmosphere went tight – like the air itself had started holding its breath.

And then a brick sailed through the air.

It hit the guard beside Tarlov square in the jaw. He crumpled.

"Break them!" Tarlov roared, raising his weapon.

But the crowd was already moving.

A woman in the third row ripped bandages from her leg – exposing clean, healed skin. She lifted her arms to the sky and screamed, not in pain, but like she was calling something down. "Flame Father! No more lies! No more chains!"

The line broke – forward. Bottles flew. Someone hurled a heavy tool box that shattered on impact. One Enforcer fired a pulse round, hitting an old man in the chest. He dropped.

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But no one ran.

They charged.

A man leapt over the barrier, teeth bared, wrench in hand. He went down in a tangle of limbs with one of the guards. Another civilian tackled a soulshield bearer into the dirt and began beating his head into the road.

Chaos tore across the checkpoint.

Tarlov aimed and fired – took out a girl in her teens. She didn't even have a weapon. Just a face full of fury.

Then he saw it.

One of his men – down. A rebel crouched beside the corpse. Blood on his hands. He looked up at the soul-powered blade clutched in the guard's fingers. Hesitated. Then grabbed it.

It screamed into life.

The glow bit into his palm. The handle seared through skin. He screamed – a high, ripping sound – but he didn't let go.

He swung.

The blade sheared through another Enforcer's thigh, cauterising as it cut. The wounded guard dropped, screaming.

More Enforcers went down. Others fled.

Tarlov backed away, heart pounding, helmet fogged. The checkpoint was on fire – one of the soulshield generators had overloaded, sparking flame across the cloth tent.

The crowd was everywhere now. A river of fists and fire.

He turned to run but the civilians didn't chase.

They moved past him. Through the shattered checkpoint. Not fleeing. Not looting.

Marching.

They were headed inward.

Into the city. Spreading the truth. The fire. The fury.

And Tarlov finally understood.

They hadn't come to escape. They'd come to start something.

…………………

The wind howled through the broken steel frame of the tower, rattling cables and loose aluminium panels like bones in a bag. The blinking red light on the console pulsed slow and steady, casting the inside of the booth in flashes of crimson.

Chloe stared at it.

Alyssa stood behind her, silent. Watching. Waiting.

The comm panel was already open. The signal was live – wideband, piggybacked off the backup grid. No filters. No delays. Once she spoke, it would reach every receiver in Prague: civilian, Enforcer, smuggler, priest. It would cut through broadcasts, override local nodes, override Tomas's fading propaganda loops.

No rehearsal. No edits.

Just her voice.

Chloe reached forward, pressed the transmitter.

The red light steadied.

She breathed in once. And spoke.

"You saw Tomas fall."

No ceremony. No introduction.

"You felt it. That warmth that washed over you. That healing. That wasn't him. That wasn't the King. That wasn't some divine mercy."

She paused.

"That was us."

Across the city, people turned toward radios. Jammers buzzed and then died. Rooftop dishes aligned on instinct. The voice – her voice – cut across everything.

"That golden pulse came from the resistance. From real Contractors. Not Enforcers. People not controlled by Tomas. People who bled to find the truth and bring it back to you."

She could hear her heart thudding in the headset. Didn't matter. She kept going.

"Tomas is a puppet. Has been for years. The real ruler is something far worse. A demon. His name is Belphegor. And he lives in the cracks beneath this city. He feeds on silence. On fear. On obedience."

She glanced sideways through the window. Flames danced in the distance. Smoke was rising in more than one direction now.

"The Flame Father – the one they told you to worship? He was chained. Shackled like an animal, locked in the Cathedral. Tomas didn't save him. He caged him."

Her voice faltered for half a second. But then it hardened.

"And now he's free. Because someone dared to fight back."

The console crackled faintly beneath her hands. She leaned in.

"You're not safe. That's the trick. They want you quiet. Comfortable. Slowly eaten, breath by breath. You think you're surviving but you're dissolving. Every silence. Every neighbour who vanished. Every time you told your kid not to ask questions."

She let that sit.

Then she said it plain.

"Now is the time to rise."

Across Prague, it rippled.

—A drunk ex-soldier blinked at his radio, dropped his flask, and picked up a rusted pike he'd kept under the bed since the Collapse.

—A mute baker, face flour-white and lined with grief, stepped to her storefront and drew a single word across the glass: FRAUD.

—In a quiet corner of the city, a child dipped her fingers in crushed clay and painted a simple gold circle on the wall. Her mother didn't stop her. She just took her hand.

Back in the booth, Chloe felt the words tighten behind her ribs. She didn't fight them.

"This isn't hope. It's survival. We don't get second chances in this city. But you've got this one."

She hesitated only a heartbeat more.

Then:

"This is your city now. Don't ask for permission."

Her voice cracked, just slightly.

"Take it."

She killed the signal.

The red light winked out.

Silence rushed back in, thick and ringing. Chloe leaned back in the chair, suddenly aware of how badly her hands were shaking.

Behind her, Alyssa exhaled. "Do you think it'll work?"

Chloe didn't look at her. She just watched the smoke rising on the horizon, glowing faintly in the shape of fire.

"I don't think it matters anymore," she said.

And the city burned a little brighter.

…………………

The bell above the hall had stopped ringing three days ago, and still the priest kept shouting. His voice cracked now with every invocation, but it didn't stop him. The speakers mounted along the eaves still played fragments of liturgy – distorted, decaying, skipping every few lines like a scratched vinyl loop.

Ying stood across the square, in the shadow of a ruined watchpost, arms folded, hood pulled low.

The prayer hall stood proud. Gleaming. Columns polished, banners unmarred. The Flame Father's symbol still shone above the archway – restored after the last acid protest months ago. Below it, Enforcers lined the marble steps, soulshields armed, faces blank behind their helmets.

And yet something was… off.

The plaza wasn't empty.

A small group had gathered – maybe twenty. Mostly older women, hunched from years of labour. A few limping men. A child gripping a makeshift crutch. Their clothes were ragged, ash-stained, but their eyes – their eyes were clear.

They moved slowly. Together.

Ying said nothing. Watched. Measured.

Inside, the priest's voice grew louder.

"Return to your homes! The city burns because of heretics! Because you failed to believe! This is judgment – divine purification!"

No one stopped moving.

Then a woman stepped out from the group. Her face was lined and sharp. One arm dangled limp at her side, wrapped in old prayer cloth – browned with time and sweat. She climbed one step. Then another. Then another.

Ying tensed.

The woman raised her ruined arm and screamed.

"He was in chains!"

The voice rang out across the square. Pure. Righteous.

"We prayed to a prisoner! We gave him our children. Our skin. Our faith. And he was chained!"

The Enforcers didn't respond. Not yet.

But the priest hesitated. His sermon faltered.

Ying felt the shift.

A boy – couldn't have been more than fifteen – stepped forward from the side of the crowd. No one saw where he came from. No one stopped him.

He held something bundled in cloth.

With slow, deliberate hands, he unwrapped it – revealing the blackened, half-burnt remains of an Enforcer's cloak.

He held it up.

Then dropped a match.

The flames rose quick, greedy. The crowd didn't cheer.

They moved.

The Enforcers raised their shields, shouted warnings but it was too late.

The old woman rushed the steps with a cane in one hand and fire in the other. Another threw broken glass. The shields held for all of ten seconds – then crumpled under sheer weight and fury.

The crowd surged.

The doors burst inward.

Inside, the priest shrieked and tried to run.

He made it three steps before hands grabbed his robe. His screams didn't last long.

Ying didn't blink.

She remained where she was, watching smoke begin to curl through the windows, hearing glass shatter inside the once-hallowed walls.

She could feel it now. The air itself was changing – electric, alive. The kind of charge that came before lightning struck.

Someone nearby whispered, "We did it. They're gone. They're really gone."

Ying's lips parted. Not in joy. Not in awe.

Just a breath of quiet satisfaction.

She whispered, to no one in particular:

"That's one."

…………………

Dusk fell over Prague like a bloodstained veil, sky streaked with fire and ash. The air had turned heavy – not with smoke, but with something older. Older than the city. Older than fear. A thrum beneath the cobblestones, not magic, not war – but momentum.

It began in silence.

Two blacksmith brothers wheeled a rusted cart through the northern edge of the Dust District. Inside: cleavers, furnace hooks, iron rods sharpened to brutal points. A broken soulblade, still humming faintly. One brother, his beard singed and shoulder bandaged, passed a glowing shard to a woman with a missing eye and a jaw like cracked stone. She took it without a word. Not one of them looked back.

South of them, three bakers smashed the stained-glass front of a Tomas prayer chapel with rolling pins and shattered stone. They didn't speak, didn't cheer, just pried loose every prayer panel and tossed it into the gutter, one by one. Down the road, a seamstress handed kitchen knives to her daughters. "Hide them?" one asked. The mother shook her head. "No," she said. "Hold them."

In the Hollow Quarter, a gang of children no older than ten pulled a statue of Tomas from its pedestal with a rope knotted around his throat. When it hit the ground, they didn't cheer. One spat on it. Another shattered its gold-gilded crown with a brick. The third painted a gold circle over Tomas's face in dust and spit.

Elsewhere, a mute baker smeared the word FRAUD across her shop window in flour. Her neighbours saw it. No one wiped it clean.

From the back alleys to the rooftops, Prague began to move. Slowly at first – one person breaking locks on storage crates, another dragging a box of tools from a ruined tram station. Then more. A butcher rolled out his meat hooks and tied them into ropes. A former schoolteacher cracked open her cellar and handed out axes. People wrapped torn shirts around their mouths, dipped belts in oil, dragged old Enforcer batons from hiding. Scrap metal was bound to wrists. Plaster masks painted with Dan's golden circle covered faces. The city began to look like something reborn from bone and fire.

Near the East Wall, a crowd surrounded an Enforcer checkpoint. Guards shouted, rifles raised. Then two boys – maybe thirteen – stepped forward with a hammer and swung. The first strike missed. The second didn't. The checkpoint didn't fall instantly. But it fell.

A freed prisoner staggered from the holding pen, missing three fingers and both shoes. She looked at the crowd, eyes hollow. A girl offered her a shawl. Another handed her a blade.

They didn't ask if she could still fight. She nodded once and took her place beside them.

In the western alleys, rebels began painting the halo. Dan's symbol – glowing circles in ash and mud, pressed onto doors, bridges, alley walls. A new language scrawled in firelight. No one explained it. No one needed to.

Then the firelight spread.

One flare rose from the Glass Quarter, then another from the Tower District. A chain reaction. Signal fires long outlawed under Tomas's regime were rekindled, rooftops alight with glowing arcs. Families lit candles in their windows, then smashed them on the floor. Children sang half-remembered resistance songs and stomped to the beat. Old men recited names of the dead, over and over again, until they became battle cries.

It didn't happen all at once.

It started in ones.

A father and daughter stepping out of their apartment with stolen weapons.

Then tens.

A cluster of neighbours dragging a toppled golem from the canal and gutting it for parts.

Then hundreds.

Streams of people emerging from the shadows like veins, moving not with panic but with purpose. Each street became a river. Each alley a tide.

They didn't run.

They marched.

Toward the Cathedral. Toward the centre. Toward the lie.

A preacher stood on the steps of a burned-out courthouse, eyes wild with tears. He raised both arms and shouted, "This is what you made us!"

By then, it was unstoppable.

A Tomas banner snapped loose from the City Hall tower and caught fire mid-air, curling into ash as it fell.

Below it, they gathered.

One. Ten. A hundred. A thousand.

And still more.

The cobblestones trembled under the weight of feet, not from fear but from fury. From something sacred reclaimed. Ten thousand strong now. Not trained. Not armed well. Not ready in any traditional sense.

But they were done waiting.

Ten thousand bodies moved as one. Ten thousand souls, marching on the Cathedral. Untrained. Unarmed. Unbreakable.

And the city, for the first time in years, did not whisper.

It roared.

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