The square swayed with me. Every step forward cracked through the stones like a drumbeat, the echo chasing itself across the walls, across the torches, across the endless chant.
I was no longer certain if the fire outside me or the fire within me burned brighter. My body was hollow, scraped clean, every breath a splinter of glass. But still I lifted my head. Still I bore the crown.
The chosen surged, their shadows blotting the torchlight. The priests howled the Veil's command, their words striking like iron. The crowd's roar faltered beneath it, trembling, but their eyes clung to me.
To me—nothing more than a girl trembling in the dark, bones shaking beneath a crown of thorns.
I wanted to tell them I was no savior. That my legs ached, that my chest was failing, that my body longed to fall.
But my mouth shaped only one truth:
"Do not kneel."
The world answered. A thousand throats broke into defiance, louder than the Veil, louder than the chosen, louder than the death pressing against my skin.
The air fractured. The night split.
And at last, I slipped.
The crown fell first, striking stone with a sound like shattering glass. Silence ripped through the square. For a heartbeat, even the Veil's chant broke.
I followed, knees buckling, body sinking to the ground. But I did not bow. Even in the fall, my spine stayed straight, my eyes fixed upward.
The people saw. And they rose.
The square erupted with my name, not in mourning, but in fire. The silence was broken forever.
And though the crown lay shattered at my side, I had given them more than myself. I had given them a voice.
A voice that would not kneel.