“When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.” — Proverbs 29:2

  I didn’t know I was watching history.

  I thought it was punishment.

  The city was ordered silent before sunrise. No bells. No prayers sung aloud. Even the vendors kept their stalls shuttered, as if commerce itself might be taken for defiance. Soldiers stood at every crossing long before the people gathered, and they didn’t shout or threaten. They only waited.

  That frightened us more than anger would have.

  By the time the gates opened, the street was already full.

  The sun hung high and merciless above the stone road, heat pressing down until breathing felt like work. Nobody spoke. When someone tried, a guard turned his head—just a glance—and the words died in the speaker’s throat.

  Then the iron bar lifted.

  The sound traveled too far.

  The doors opened slowly, and for a moment nothing came through. The empty space held, deliberate, like the king wanted the silence to curdle into fear.

  Then they dragged him out.

  At first, I did not recognize Orus.

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  His body struck the cobblestones with each pull of the rope, limp except for one arm that twitched weakly against the ground. His fingers snagged in the cracks between stones, nails tearing as he was pulled forward. A dark trail followed him—not bright red like I’d imagined blood would be, but thick and nearly black beneath the sun.

  Someone near me whispered his name.

  No one repeated it.

  A woman covered her child’s eyes. The child fought her, peering between her fingers, until Orus’ chest jerked in a shallow breath. The girl began to cry, and her mother pressed the child’s face into her dress to smother the sound.

  The guards marched in perfect rhythm, boots striking together, the echo bouncing off stone and shuttered wood. They weren’t hauling a corpse.

  They were showing us what a body becomes when it decides to matter.

  The king walked beside them.

  He didn’t look at Orus. He didn’t look at us. His expression was calm, almost bored, as though this were a task to finish before the day truly began. No performance. No rage.

  Only certainty.

  Three nights earlier, I’d heard Orus speak in the square. He talked about food for the poor districts, water no longer taxed, a day when soldiers would protect the people instead of watching them. His voice shook, but he didn’t stop. He said the words anyway, like saying them made them possible.

  Now the entire city watched his body dragged through its streets.

  His hand caught on a raised stone near where I stood. For a moment his torso twisted and I thought—truly thought—he might rise. My heart leapt before my mind could stop it.

  A guard kicked his arm free.

  They kept walking.

  No one moved to help him.

  No one dared.

  Above us, a lone bird circled in the empty sky. I stared at it because I couldn’t bear to look down anymore. It wheeled once, slow and patient, as if waiting for something to finish.

  When the procession ended, the crowd didn’t speak. People simply dispersed, drifting away in tight clusters that broke apart when they got too close to one another. Eyes stayed down. Faces turned aside. As if being seen seeing would count.

  But it already did.

  We’d been taught what happens to those who dream aloud.

  A king does not drag a rebel through the streets to kill an idea.

  He does it to make the rest of us choke the idea before it ever reaches our mouths.

  I have never forgotten the sound Orus’ hand made against the stone.

  And I have never forgiven the silence.