The elders exchange looks — some hopeful, some wary, and some like they’re already counting the cost down in body bags. It’s not misplaced. They’ve lived in fear for months.
Mayor’s voice tightens. “We need to finalize our defensive strategy. The executions… they’ve rattled this town to its core.”
I nod. “Show me the intelligence.”
Without another word, he taps a console in the center of the table. A projection springs up — ghostly light against weary eyes — and the footage begins.
The screen flickers to life with grainy, handheld surveillance from two days earlier.
The first execution is quiet, almost casual: a man kneels in the center of a dusty square, hood pulled back, hands bound. Villagers are forced to watch from all sides — faces slack with terror, eyes hollowed like burned-out craters. The executioner, clad in ceremonial armor and bearing the sigil of Large Marj, raises a blade toward the sky. The blade catches the sun — a cold, gleaming promise.
Then the kill.
The crowd doesn’t flinch at the strike.
Theywantedto see it.
And that’s the worst part.
The second execution is worse.
A woman — fierce eyes, defiantly raised chin — is dragged to a makeshift platform. Marj stands beside her, her grin just wideenough to suggest a performance, not an execution. Marj’s voice — crisp, clear in the audio — announces the death as a message, not a punishment.
“She is but a prelude,” Marj says. “Let the Butcher come. We have sharpened our stage.”
The third execution is the cruellest.
Three rebels bound together, faces bruised and bleeding, forced to kneel before an assembled crowd. Marj leans in close, her voice silk over iron:
“We feed legends to become myths. And myths die before stories begin.”
Then the blade descends.
The silence after that — it wasn’t quiet. It was a scream without sound.
I sit still with it a long moment, watching the pixels wash over blood and terror and calculated cruelty.
The mayor’s voice is thick when he speaks next.
“They wanted the town to see it. They wantedyouto see it.”
I lower my gaze from the projection and meet his eyes.
“Well, then,” I say, voice low, “they succeeded. Wesaw.”
One of the elders — an old man with eyes like chipped flint — shakes his head.
“They want you to respond publicly,” he says. “Marj wants to draw out the Butcher. Wants a confrontation she controls.”
My spine stiffens.
I don’t say it out loud, but the thought creeps in:There is no Butcher.
Not really.
Not yet.
But theybelievethere is.
