I stare at the words and feel my heartbeat everywhere—wrists, throat, the backs of my knees.
For so long Kirell has existed inside euphemism. Tactical collapse. Tragic error. Fog of war. Phrases built to make grief sound administrative.
Now the language is finally failing in public.
A prosecutor starts to say, “The Office reserves the right to amend?—”
Drax cuts him off. “You will do more than amend.”
He sits down.
Around me, the chamber dissolves into procedural triage. Deliberation scheduling. Evidence preservation orders. Panel integration directives. Emergency transcript protections. Security moving toward exits as if truth itself might stampede.
My hands start shaking only then, after the presentation is over. Fine tremors. The kind you can hide until you can’t.
I undock my compad and turn from the dais.
A reporter near the gallery edge shouts, “Liaison Ardent—do you believe Rhyx Varos is innocent?”
Security starts toward him.
I answer before they get there.
I don’t raise my voice. I don’t perform it. I just tell the cleanest truth I have.
“I believe the record is bigger than the man you wanted to bury under it.”
For one strange electric second, the chamber goes still.
Then the noise comes back harder.
I step down from the dais into heat, light, voices, consequence. My skin feels too tight. My mouth is dry enough to hurt. Every sound seems edged in glass.
Mirov catches my elbow near the side exit. His grip is brief and firm. “Good work.”
“That feels like a deranged thing to say in a disaster.”
His mouth almost curves. “Disaster for who?”
I think of Vol. Of Thane. Of every person who thought they could keep the institution upright by laying one body under the weight of its sins.
Then I think of my parents’ names in the manifest.
Of Rhyx behind glass.
Of how none of this is over.
“For everybody,” I say. “Just not equally.”
He releases me. “Final deliberation notice will issue within hours. Don’t disappear.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“Good.”
I keep walking.
The side corridor receives me with colder air and dimmer light. The noise from the chamber becomes a muffled storm behind sealed walls. A printer somewhere nearby spits hard-copy orders in furious succession, sheet after sheet, the mechanical rhythm sharp in the relative quiet. My ears are ringing. My fingers are still shaking.
