Kael woke to pain.
Not the sharp kind—no wounds, no blood—but the deep, aching soreness of a body that had carried something far heavier than muscle or bone had ever been meant to bear.
He lay still, breathing slowly, cataloging sensations the way Aurelian had once taught him. Stone beneath his back. Linen against his skin. The faint smell of smoke and citrus drifting through an open window.
Human details.
When he finally sat up, the room did not respond.
No pressure in the air. No warmth coiled in his chest. No sense of being observed by something vast and patient.
It was gone.
Not destroyed. Not sealed.
Detached.
Kael pressed a hand over his heart. It beat steadily, stubbornly mortal.
"So," Michael said from the chair by the window, "this is what you look like without a cosmic parasite."
Kael huffed a weak laugh. "You make it sound flattering."
Michael stood, studying him closely. "You feel… quieter."
"I am," Kael said. "And louder."
Michael grinned. "Yeah. That tracks."
Outside, Virell moved on.
That alone felt unreal.
No omens. No system backlash. No divine reassertion of order. People shouted in the streets below—arguing prices, laughing, swearing at carts that blocked intersections.
Life, uncurated.
Seris arrived an hour later, eyes sharp, posture controlled—and then she saw Kael standing on his own and stopped short.
"You look terrible," she said.
Kael smiled. "I feel worse."
She crossed the room and hugged him before he could respond. Not carefully. Not ceremonially.
Just tightly.
When she stepped back, her eyes were bright. "The Custodian?"
"Deferred," Michael said. "Which is system-speak for 'we have no idea what to do with this yet.'"
Seris exhaled slowly. "Good."
Aurelian arrived last.
She did not rush. She did not speak at first. She simply knelt before Kael and bowed her head—not in worship, but in acknowledgment.
"The Veiled Star no longer claims you," she said softly. "And it cannot reclaim what you have made… common."
Kael frowned. "Common?"
Aurelian looked up, eyes clear and sad and hopeful all at once. "The power you carried is no longer centralized. It exists now only as potential—within choice, within consent, within shared meaning."
Michael leaned against the wall. "In simpler terms? The system's gone open-source."
Kael stared at them. "That's… dangerous."
"Yes," Aurelian agreed. "And honest."
News arrived throughout the day.
Saint Varric's host dissolved—not in battle, but in argument. Without a cosmic hierarchy reinforcing him, his certainty collapsed under scrutiny.
Across the coast, the silver-voiced woman was found living quietly in a fishing town, teaching children to sing. No miracles. No followers.
No need.
And elsewhere—small, quiet things began.
Communities forming councils without permission. Shrines becoming schools. Former echoes becoming people again, confused but free.
Kael sat with Michael that evening on the same rooftop where the Custodian had appeared.
"You know they'll try again," Michael said. "Different angle. Different tools."
"I know," Kael replied.
Michael glanced at him. "You regret it?"
Kael thought of the warmth he no longer felt. The certainty he no longer carried.
The weight he no longer bore alone.
"No," he said. "I finally understand it."
"Understand what?"
Kael looked out over the city—not as a ruler, not as a node, not even as a conqueror.
"As a man."
"That power was never meant to make one person strong," Kael said quietly. "It was meant to teach people to stop waiting."
Michael smiled, slow and genuine. "Yeah. That'll really piss them off."
Kael laughed, and the sound surprised him with its ease.
Above them, the stars burned—ancient, distant, indifferent.
For the first time, that felt like mercy.