The Sovereign tread the streets of Selvarad not as king, nor conqueror,
but as dust beneath the boots of the mighty.
He walked through the fetid alleys where the nobles never dared glance,
where children with hollow eyes picked through refuse,
where mothers sold their names to feed the day's hunger.
At every corner, he listened.
At every shadowed doorway, he watched.
Truths whispered in the dark carried farther than any decree.
["To know a kingdom," the Sovereign mused silently, "do not ask its lords how they feast. Ask its widows how they grieve."]
Days passed like river stones: silent, worn by unseen currents.
He witnessed cruelty not born from necessity, but from sport.
He saw gold hoarded in vaults while grain rotted in the fields.
He saw healers barred from the sick unless coin first crossed their palms.
Each injustice was a thread — and the Sovereign, with patient hands, wove them into a noose.
---
One night, beneath a collapsed chapel where orphans shivered,
he found a woman — eyes clear, spirit unbowed —
tending to the broken without reward, without witness.
Her hands bled where no bandage could be spared for herself.
Her songs, barely whispers, kept dying children clinging to the world a little longer.
She did not see the Sovereign, cloaked in dust.
She needed no audience for her goodness.
["In a field of ash," the Sovereign thought, "even a single green shoot is worth more than all the kings of men."]
He lingered near her as the night deepened,
saying nothing,
only breathing her hope into his ancient lungs.
When the last child fell asleep, the woman knelt by the ruined altar and prayed — not for herself, but for the strength to endure one more day.
The Sovereign bowed his head, not to the altar, but to her unseen crown.
Yet fate is cruel.
In the days that followed, the King's Guard, suspecting insurrection among the poor, stormed the chapel.
They found no armies, no weapons, only the woman —
and still they beat her as if she were a rebel chief.
Her blood stained the stones.
Her light, undimmed in life, flared brighter in death.
The Sovereign arrived too late to save her body.
But her spirit —
her spirit he caught in the palm of his hand,
cradled like the last ember of a dying world.
And he vowed, as ancient gods once did before time turned traitor:
["For every righteous soul struck down, I shall uproot ten thousand thrones. For every true heart broken, I shall remake the earth beneath my feet."]
The Sovereign, the Great Immortal Venerable Sovereign,
stood over the ruins,
his cloak fluttering like the wings of judgment.
The night itself recoiled from his presence.
---
Thus began the quiet preparation for the end of Selvarad.
Not by armies.
Not by banners.
But by the Sovereign's hand —
patient, silent, inevitable.