The burn began in the sublayer grids, where citizen records and credit streams converged. At first it looked like a glitch—flickering timestamps, names reversed, permissions revoked. But by dawn, it had evolved into something with purpose.
Every Article-linked file began to distort.
Vareth's Edicts didn't fight the System. They rewrote it.
Zeraphine watched as hundreds of vow-tokens flickered and turned black. One by one, names unlinked from memories. Entire belief-chains shattered without warning.
Arlyss backed away from the shop terminal as it sparked. "It's not just erasing people's vows. It's unmaking what they remember giving. They won't even know they had faith."
The System's interface flickered red.
> ARTICLE X: COMPROMISED
MEMORY LEDGER UNDER ATTACK
RESOLUTION REQUIRED: INITIATE COUNTER-FIRE
Sykaion gritted his teeth. "If he's turning Edicts into code… then we match it."
Zeraphine stared. "You want to burn back?"
"I want to anchor memory before it's erased."
He stepped to the vault, fingers hovering.
> INITIATE MEMORY-BINDING PROTOCOL
WARNING: HIGH RISK OF IDENTITY MERGE INSTABILITY
Sykaion whispered: "Do it."
The vault opened.
Not with sound.
With voice.
His own, layered over Seyros.
They spoke together:
> "Where Edicts overwrite, we encode. Where fire consumes, we carry."
A new symbol formed.
Not a feather.
A flame.
Not destructive.
Preservational.
The Flame of Record.
Arlyss stepped forward. "You're giving memory form."
Sykaion nodded. "And lighting it where they'll see it."
Zeraphine synced the flame to an open channel. "Ready to transmit."
They unleashed it.
Not to the city.
To its forgotten corners—orphan vaults, abandoned kiosks, fragment markets, ledger runoffs. Places where memory had been lost, not erased.
The flame landed. And ignited.
And people remembered.
Not just facts.
Feelings.
A boy dropped his falsified bounty sheet and wept. A midwife remembered the name of a mother who died believing she was forgotten. A broken AI muttered the Articles in static.
Vareth noticed.
In his red cathedral, the servers screamed.
> MEMORY CONFLICT DETECTED
EDICTFIRE SPREAD CONTAINMENT FAILED
He snarled.
Then wrote a new command.
> EDICT IV: Let Sykaion's name be stricken. Let no system recognize him.
Back in the shop, Sykaion collapsed.
The System blinked.
> NAME ERROR: SYKAION UNKNOWN
IDENTITY: ERASED
Arlyss screamed. "He's deleting you!"
Zeraphine grabbed Sykaion's shoulders. "No. He's not just deleting—he's unmaking."
But the vault still burned.
And Sykaion's last whisper echoed:
> "So let them remember me… as a flame."