The city of Lethra was built on correct assumptions.
Stone measured load precisely.
Canals obeyed gradients.
Trade routes followed profit.
People followed fear.
For three hundred years, nothing fundamental had changed.
That was why it was suitable.
Caelum Noctis arrived at dawn, when the city was most honest—half-awake, half-defended, running on habit instead of thought.
He stood at the highest public structure: the Observatory of Tides. A relic from an era when humans believed prediction equaled control.
Below him, Lethra breathed.
Smoke curled from bakeries.
Guards changed shifts.
Priests rehearsed sermons that would comfort nobody.
Causality flowed cleanly here. No divine interference. No ancient seals. No high-order anomalies.
A perfect testing ground.
Caelum closed his eyes.
The world unfolded.
Not visions.
Not prophecy.
Chains.
Invisible threads stretched from every action to its consequence, layered so densely they resembled woven fabric. Most humans lived their entire lives without ever noticing the tension around their throats.
Caelum noticed everything.
A merchant delayed opening his stall by seven minutes.
A child skipped breakfast.
A council clerk misfiled a report.
Individually meaningless.
Collectively decisive.
The Observer state stabilized.
Caelum exhaled.
Emotion did not accompany the breath. It never did anymore. What remained was calculation—clean, unburdened.
He began to sort futures.
---
Outcome Set A: Intervention
He reinforced the western water tower.
Result:
City survives.
Trade expands.
Population increases.
Food demand exceeds sustainable limits in thirty-one years.
Correction cascade:
Border conflict.
Religious schism.
War.
Projected casualties: 1.4 million.
Rejected.
---
Outcome Set B: Warning
He alerted the council.
Result:
Panic.
Evacuation bottlenecks.
Structural overload of eastern bridges.
Secondary correction:
Disease spread.
Long-term quarantine zones.
Economic collapse.
Projected casualties: 800,000.
Rejected.
---
Outcome Set C: Partial Rescue
He saved only the lower districts.
Result:
Class resentment.
Armed uprising.
Retaliatory purge by elites.
Projected casualties: 300,000, plus long-term systemic instability.
Rejected.
---
Outcome Set D: Non-Intervention
The water tower collapses.
Chain reaction:
Flooding.
Structural liquefaction.
Sequential district failure.
Casualties: 132,486.
Contained.
Localized.
Stable aftermath.
Accepted.
---
Caelum opened his eyes.
The decision was complete.
A scream echoed from below—early, premature. A deviation of 0.4 seconds from prediction. Acceptable variance.
He adjusted nothing.
A man stood beside him on the observatory platform, clutching a ledger. The man's hands shook.
"Sir," the man said, voice thin with uncertainty, "the pressure readings… they're abnormal. Should we—"
"No," Caelum replied.
The word carried weight disproportionate to its sound. The man hesitated, then nodded and left.
Obedience required no explanation. Only authority.
The first structural failure occurred precisely when expected.
Stone cracked.
Water surged.
People ran.
Caelum watched.
Not with indifference—indifference implied absence of interest. This was attention without sentiment. The kind a surgeon gave infected tissue.
The city tried to save itself.
Barricades went up too late.
Prayers were spoken to gods that had not registered Lethra as a relevant variable.
Families broke formation, prioritizing blood over efficiency.
The death count rose accordingly.
A child appeared at the stairwell entrance.
She was small. Undernourished. Her left shoe was missing.
"Mister," she said, looking past him at the sky, "why is the tower screaming?"
It was. Stone under stress produced sound. The city had never listened to itself before.
Caelum crouched.
"Because it was built on assumptions that no longer apply."
She frowned. "Will it stop?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"Soon."
She seemed satisfied with that.
She ran back downstairs.
Caelum did not record her projected outcome.
The western district collapsed inward, triggering the canal overflow. Water followed gravity. Gravity followed law. Law followed nothing.
The screams synchronized.
Six seconds per cluster.
Eleven clusters.
Caelum verified the data.
The eastern wall failed slightly earlier than predicted. A minor correction by reality, compensating for accumulated deviations.
Interesting.
He noted it mentally.
When the dust settled, Lethra no longer qualified as a city.
It was debris, memory, and residue.
Caelum turned away.
---
By nightfall, refugees filled the roads.
They blamed the council.
They blamed the engineers.
They blamed the gods.
Blame was a social coping mechanism. It reduced chaos by fabricating agency.
Caelum walked among them.
No one noticed him at first. That, too, was expected. Humans rarely perceived the absence of intent.
A woman recognized him.
Her eyes locked onto his face with unnatural clarity.
"You," she whispered.
Her voice carried. Others turned.
"You were there," she said louder. "On the tower."
"Yes."
"You saw it coming."
"Yes."
Her breathing grew erratic. Grief accelerated cognition briefly, then destroyed it.
"Then why didn't you stop it?"
Caelum considered the question.
Not emotionally.
Structurally.
"Because stopping it caused greater harm."
The words landed poorly.
A man lunged.
A fist connected with Caelum's jaw.
Pain registered. Data logged. No reaction followed.
Another strike missed—by too much.
Probability skewed.
Reality corrected clumsily.
The attacker tripped, fell, and struck his head. Not fatal. Worse.
He began to laugh.
The crowd recoiled.
They sensed something was wrong, but not where. Like animals hearing a frequency they couldn't locate.
Caelum spoke, calmly, precisely.
"If your city had survived, it would have birthed a war that erased three nations. If that war failed to ignite, famine would have followed. If famine was avoided, something older would have noticed."
He gestured to the ruins.
"This was efficient."
Silence followed.
Then hatred.
Hatred was useful. It simplified variables.
The mark burned into his shadow.
Caelum felt it immediately.
Classification pressure.
He looked up.
The air folded.
Space bent—not violently, but decisively, like a page turned by an impatient reader.
It arrived.
Not a god.
Not a man.
An Executor.
It had no face, only symmetry. No emotion, only function. Its presence erased coincidence.
The crowd froze—not physically, but conceptually. Their relevance dropped to zero.
> ANOMALY CONFIRMED.
CAUSALITY DEVIATION EXCEEDS TOLERANCE.
Caelum met its gaze.
No fear.
No reverence.
Only recognition.
> DESIGNATION: ERROR.
CORRECTION SCHEDULED.
The mark deepened.
The world shuddered.
Caelum felt something detach—quietly, permanently.
Emotion receded further.
He spoke once.
"Correction acknowledged."
The Executor raised its hand.
And reality prepared to erase him.
---
[End of Chapter 1]