Kael was not amused. The laughter of his people was a poison in his ears, a direct challenge to his authority. He saw the defaced statue not as a prank, but as a declaration of war.
His rage was swift and terrible. He summoned the commander of the Wardens and, in a fit of fury, had him executed in the newly cleared plaza, a grim warning to any who might fail him again. He then unleashed the Wardens on the city with a simple, brutal order: find the perpetrators, and make them suffer.
A wave of arrests followed. Anyone suspected of disloyalty, anyone who had been seen laughing too loudly, anyone who had ever spoken a word against the Tyrant, was dragged from their home and thrown into the dungeons beneath the city. The city, which had briefly tasted a moment of levity, was now gripped by a new and more profound fear.
But the conspirators, though shaken, were not broken. They had known the risks. And they had prepared. The former Warden in their ranks had taught them the Wardens’ methods, their patrol routes, their informants. They had established safe houses, and escape routes, and a system of coded signals to warn of impending danger.
And so, when the Wardens came, they found nothing. The conspirators had vanished, melting back into the population of the city, their identities protected by a web of secrecy and misdirection.
Kael’s rage only grew. He had shown his people his power, and they had defied him. He had tried to rule through fear, and it had not been enough. And so, he made a decision. If fear would not control them, then terror would. He would make the city a prison, and he would be its unblinking, all-seeing warden. The age of the Tyrant was about to enter its darkest chapter.