Veyra looked out through the cabin’s pressurized glass, the first stars piercing the veil of atmosphere as the city dwindled below. His reflection hovered there—half man, half phantom—haunted yet resolute. The blood of the Silent Schism clung to him still, not in stains upon his hands but in the faces that rose unbidden: rivals silenced, voices smothered, unity purchased in ash. He carried them not as guilt, but as testament. Proof that sacrifice was the mortar of eternity, and that the Imperium’s crown was set upon bones.
The Serpent’s Crown broke through the cloudline, its engines trailing banners of fire. Then it vanished into the firmament, painting the night sky in crimson and gold.
Below, the plazas thundered with devotion. Children were lifted onto shoulders to glimpse the holy vessel ascend, elders pressed their foreheads to the marble, and the seal of the Flame and Ouroboros rippled from every banner like scripture unfurled.
Thus it was recorded in the archives of the Oratorum:
The Flame does not flicker. The Ouroboros does not break. The Imperium does not yield.
So ended the Edict of Ashes, sealed in the voice of High Orator Calyxis Veyra, sanctified by the Throne, and carried into eternity.
But memory is not bound by marble walls.
In the frontier, the same night bore another name. They did not call it the Silent Schism, as the chronicles decreed. They called it The Moment of Discord.
For them, it was not rebirth but silencing—the night when voices were smothered before they could cry out, when neighbors vanished into the dark, when the Flame burned not with holiness but with hunger.
And so they remembered, not the unity proclaimed in marble halls, but the Discord that still echoed in the stars.