Chapter 650: SEVEN DAY LATER [Part-2]
Chapter 650: SEVEN DAY LATER [Part-2]
SEVEN DAY LATER [Part-2]
The fourth day had been realization.
Not a grand epiphany delivered by banners or bells. Not a single speech echoing through the squares.
It was quieter than that.
Shops unbarred their doors.
Stalls creaked open.
Shutters lifted one by one, as if the city itself were peeking out from beneath a blanket of fear.
Markets reopened.
At the gates, guards stood straight-backed. No hands slipped forward. No muttered demands. No familiar cough that meant pay up or turn back.
Guards no longer demanded bribes at gates.
In narrow alleys where shadows once ruled, something felt... wrong.
Too open.
Too visible.
Too dangerous.
Thieves stopped operating in daylight.
A drunken squad of soldiers tried to drag a fruit seller from his cart before noon.
They didn’t finish the attempt.
Steel flashed.
Orders were barked.
Bodies hit the stones.
Drunk soldiers were executed on the spot if they harassed civilians.
No trials.
No negotiations.
No whispered pardons behind closed doors.
Word spread faster than any proclamation.
Not through town criers.
Not through official notices.
Through terrified murmurs in taverns.
Through wide-eyed merchants whispering over scales.
Through servants leaning close in candlelit kitchens.
The new king did not tolerate disorder.
From anyone.
Not nobles.
Not soldiers.
Not civilians.
Not even his own commanders.
That terrified people.
The idea that no one was safe from punishment.
That power no longer came with guaranteed immunity.
That even the ones closest to the throne could fall.
But strangely...
It also comforted them.
Because fear shared by everyone felt different from fear aimed only downward.
Because chaos with rules was still better than chaos without limits.
Because for the first time in years, terror seemed... evenly distributed.
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The fifth day had been strange.
No celebrations.
No protests.
No mass kneeling or mass rebellion.
Just motion.
Quiet, stubborn motion.
People returned to routine.
Not because they trusted Leon.
Not because they loved him.
But because hunger still existed.
Children still needed food.
Farms still needed tending.
Life refused to pause.
A woman kneaded dough with shaking hands, then steadied them.
A butcher sharpened his knife while glancing toward the street every few breaths.
A father counted coins twice before buying grain.
Bakers opened ovens.
The smell of bread drifted cautiously into streets that still remembered smoke.
Blacksmiths lit forges.
Sparks danced upward, small and defiant.
Merchants arranged stalls.
Carefully.
Neatly.
Leaving wider gaps than before, as if expecting soldiers to march through at any moment.
Voices stayed low.
Eyes stayed alert.
No one spoke about the king openly.
But everyone thought about him.
The capital began breathing again.
Not deeply.
Not freely.
But enough to survive.
Cautiously.
Like a wounded beast testing its legs.
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The sixth day had been acceptance.
Not loyalty.
Not devotion.
Acceptance.
Because reality had become undeniable.
Crime was collapsing—not in rumors, not in hopeful whispers, but in numbers people could see with their own eyes. Streets that once swallowed screams at night now echoed with footsteps and guarded patrols. Markets that had been battlegrounds for scraps stood calmer, louder with bargaining than desperation.
Food prices were stabilizing.
Not cheap. Not abundant.
But stable.
For the first time in years, bread cost the same in the morning as it did at dusk.
Public executions were decreasing.
Scaffold platforms that had once been permanent fixtures of terror were being dismantled piece by piece. Some still stood. Some still saw use. But they were no longer spectacles meant to frighten the masses into submission. They were rare. Targeted. Controlled.
And no noble dared complain.
Not in councils.
Not in salons.
Not even in private letters.
The ones who had tried were no longer present to explain themselves.
People noticed something else too.
Something subtle.
Something impossible.
District walls were being torn down.
Not ceremonially.
Not with speeches or banners.
Just work crews. Hammers. Dust. Sweat.
Stone barriers that had stood for centuries—symbols of bloodline, wealth, and inherited worth—collapsed into rubble.
The invisible lines separating "rich quarter" from "poor quarter" were erased.
No more guarded arches.
No more chained gates at twilight.
No more whispered warnings about crossing into the wrong street.
Whole neighbourhoods were reorganized.
Surveyors walked door to door. Clerks with ink-stained fingers carried lists. Soldiers escorted them—not as threats, but as guarantees.
Housing redistributed.
Families were moved. Some protested. Some begged. Some wept.
But the moves continued.
Empty noble estates converted into communal living zones.
Ballrooms became dormitories.
Dining halls became kitchens.
Private gardens became shared courtyards.
Warehouses turned into public granaries.
Where once only nobles lived...
Now commoners walked freely.
Boots on marble.
Calloused hands on gilded railings.
Children staring openly at chandeliers they’d only heard about in stories.
Where beggars once slept in alleys...
Now they slept under roofs.
Not palaces.
Not luxury.
But solid walls.
Dry floors.
Doors that locked.
For the first time in history...
Rich and poor lived in the same districts.
Not equally.
But together.
You could see it in small moments.
A silk-robed merchant waiting behind a laborer at a water pump.
A former noble child sharing a bench with a blacksmith’s son.
Awkward glances.
Tense silences.
Curiosity.
Resentment.
Confusion.
But also something unfamiliar.
Adjustment.
And anyone who openly discriminated...
Disappeared.
Publicly.
Quietly.
Irreversibly.
No trials.
No announcements.
No posters explaining why.
One day they were loud.
The next day they were gone.
Sometimes a sealed door.
Sometimes an abandoned shop.
Sometimes a family that refused to speak their name.
Fear did not vanish.
But it changed shape.
It stopped pointing upward.
It stopped pointing outward.
It began pointing inward.
People learned fast.
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The seventh day had been something else.
Hope.
Not loud hope.
Not singing-in-the-streets hope.
But small hope.
Private hope.
Dangerous hope.
The kind people were really scared to say it to themselves. They did not want to admit this thing not even when they were alone with their thoughts, about the people.
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The morning sunlight came over the rooftops of Nagareth. It made the tiles and the stone look nice and golden. The whole town looked pretty in the gold color of the morning sunlight. Nagareth really looked beautiful in this light.
The light touched the cracked chimneys and the crooked eaves. It slid across the patched walls. The light got caught in the broken windows that had not yet been replaced. The broken windows no longer had big holes like open wounds. The city still had the light on its scars but the light did not go away, from the citys scars.
Smoke was coming from away places where Leons people were still working. They were finding hiding spots and closing them down. They were knocking down tunnels. Bringing out the bad stuff that was hidden. The smoke was just floating slowly through the air. Leons forces were doing all of this to make the place better.
Yet the air felt different.
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