I, Fernando Alejandro Ruiz-de-re Castro-Torres Rea-Iberia-de-Lateran, King of Iberia and the Aegir, do hereby proclaim the following in Lia Iberia.
To every individual and collective subject to my command:
You are already aware, or are intimately familiar with, the unprecedented and extraordinary era our Kingdom currently endures.
Sudden and violent meteorological and geological upheavals have inflicted varying degrees of devastation across our lands. We have detected anomalous oceanic activity; communications in several regions of the Kingdom have been temporarily severed; and we have found that numerous coastal ports and cities have lost contact with the crown. We now recognize that these abnormalities are not mere accidents of nature, but intentional provocations—acts of barbarism aimed at Iberia and human civilization itself.
The perpetrator of this cruelty is none other than the seas of Terra.
The waters of Terra have shed the docile mask they maintained for centuries, revealing a cruel and ferocious countenance. The sea harbors a profound hatred for our prosperous and mighty Kingdom, and for the terrestrial civilization of man. It disregards life, contaminates the earth, and violates everything our civilization has known until this hour.
Iberia, the repository of Terra's supreme glory, must stand as a bulwark of order and a steadfast shield of civilization. Regardless of the source or strength of this malevolent will, we must possess the resolve to confront all evil.
I shall never tolerate any atrocity that harms our people or ravages our soil, nor shall I permit any reckless act that threatens the Kingdom or our civilization. The light of the lighthouses remains brilliant; the Golden Fleet has set sail. This hour of hardship shall soon pass, and our victory is within reach.
In the dawning light of the coming triumph, our oaths shine brighter than the stars, stand firmer than the earth, and flow mightier than the sea. Though I am no longer physically among you, my thoughts and spirit shall remain eternally by your side.
I, King Fernando Alejandro I, shall issue further directives in twelve hours. In this most exceptional time, we must hold fast to a singular faith. Iberia shall not fail. Iberia shall prevail. Iberia shall remain immortal.
— The Decree of Silence
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In February 1038, the air in Lia Iberia was damp, and that humidity served only to fray the nerves of the populace. In a city where the scent of the brine clung to one's collar like a physical weight, a massive convention was set to begin.
The 15th Congress of the Iberian Communist Party was abnormal from its inception.
The nominal agenda was meticulously organized, but its substantive purpose was not organization—it was the expulsion of opposing factions. It was a purge.
The entrance was divided by strictly enforced security lines. While the Moderate delegates were ushered in smoothly by attendants, the delegates of the National Confederation of Trade Unions (NCTU) faction were halted at the checkpoints.
Demands to open bags were barked repeatedly. Questions were spat regarding what lay between the pages of their pamphlets. Attendants ran their hands along book spines, feigning a search for concealed blades.
Marcos Ibañez bit his lip. Sitting in this auditorium felt like a long-ingrained habit; for a considerable time, the NCTU had been a dominant force in this city. From the dockworkers' unions and the railway syndicates to the printing guilds and the sailors' collectives—they had drawn their strength from the streets and entered the assembly under the banner of independents, using that legislative power to mobilize the streets once more.
All of that had ended in 1037.
The 'Attempted Regicide.' That single phrase contaminated every sentence uttered at the congress.
Then came the name of Enrique Granada, the former head of the faction. He was a man whose career had been immolated by a sex scandal involving the harassment of his secretary. Though he had been summarily expelled from the party, his mere existence had provided the opposition with a cudgel to beat the NCTU into submission.
The Moderates took up that cudgel. They ascended the rostrum claiming a need for 'legal normalization' and the 'knocking on the doors of the National Assembly,' arguing that to open those doors, the interior had to be sanitized first.
The auditorium was packed, and the air was suffocating. Every time the chairman struck his gavel, the din subsided momentarily, only to surge back with even greater ferocity. As the first speech commenced from the chair, jeers erupted.
"An organization, by its very nature, must know how to take responsibility. To earn the trust of the masses, accountability is paramount. Yet, certain extremists within our party—"
A representative of the Moderates stood at the podium, preaching organizational responsibility and public trust. Before he could finish, a voice thundered from the NCTU section.
"Stop your drivel about responsibility, you revisionists!"
The Moderate seats immediately counterattacked. "Look who's talking—the terrorists. You're nothing but reactionaries in disguise!"
The moment the word 'reactionary' was hurled, the atmosphere in the hall fractured. The NCTU were not reactionaries; they were the men and women who had stood at the vanguard, relentlessly denouncing the King and the nobility. Now, they were being branded with the very label they despised. It wasn't a standard insult; it was a specific political sentence. While the International Communist Party supposedly regulated such rhetoric through party mandates, on the local level, being branded a reactionary justified immediate liquidation from the party ranks.
Marcos rose from his seat. "You are the reactionaries! You, who hold hands with the bourgeoisie to play your games of legal party politics!"
Laughter rippled through the Moderate section—mocking and hollow.
"Bourgeoisie? Was your attempt to murder the King an 'overthrow of the bourgeoisie'? No, it was merely an addiction to violence. You lot are suffering from a left-wing infantile disorder."
At the mention of the 'infantile disorder,' chairs rattled in the NCTU block. Someone took a step toward the stage, only to be yanked back by a comrade. They all knew that if violence broke out here, it was over. The Moderates were waiting for that very outburst.
"Order! Silence!" the chairman screamed, demanding discipline and the proper application for the right to speak. But 'the right to speak' sounded like a cruel joke. The chairman was granting the floor exclusively to the Moderates.
The Moderate representative smoothed his lapels and recited his prepared lines. "Comrades, we cannot forget the events of 1037. The attempted regicide shattered the trust the public placed in our party. And Enrique Granada's scandal—"
As Granada's name echoed, the NCTU delegates erupted in coarse profanity. "Why bring that up now! Do you intend to destroy an entire faction over one man's private disgrace?"
"A private disgrace? Why don't you try saying that in front of his victims!"
The jeers overlapped until the auditorium became a roar of predatory noise. People stomped the floors; fists pounded armrests. Pamphlets were tossed into the air—draft resolutions brought by the NCTU, bearing the names of dockworkers. Those names fell to the floor and were ground underfoot.
Estella Romero bolted upright. Her voice cut through the cacophony with a blade-like edge.
"It's not normalization you want, is it? You want to sell us out to the King and the nobles to open a door for yourselves! This congress has one purpose: the purge of the NCTU. Admit it!"
A Moderate delegate waved a hand dismissively. "Exactly! We must purge the heretics if the party is to survive!"
"Heretics? What are you, the Church? Are you priests now?"
"Worse than the Church! You're bourgeois lackeys clinging to power!"
The Moderates remained unmoved, throwing their next line. Their strength did not lie in fervor, but in a cold, calculated majority.
"We must pursue the legalization of the party! The Iberian masses are exhausted by violence and scandal. The citizens desire stability and reconstruction. To achieve this, we must form a responsible leadership. The seats on the Standing Committee of the Central Committee—especially those held by the NCTU—must be subject to a total vote of re-confidence!"
'Re-confidence.' It was a bureaucratic euphemism. To say 'replacement' would be too blatant; they chose a word that tightened the noose with professional detachment.
Juan Maria Alonso spoke in a low rumble. "'Re-confidence' means the verdict is already decided."
Marcos ground his teeth. He knew the numbers had already been secured. He knew the allocation of regional delegates had been shifted. The representation for the port districts had been slashed. There were even rumors that a day before the congress, several NCTU delegates had been suddenly detained by the Royal Police on suspicion of conspiracy.
The NCTU resisted tenaciously. They applied for the floor; they fought their way to the podium. "The means of production must remain in the hands of the workers and peasants! The moment we compromise, those means will be surrendered to the private hands of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy!"
The syndicalists spoke of the practicalities of production and distribution. "Do you trust the Royal Family? Have you forgotten the massacre of St. Lawrence's Day five years ago? And yet you preach compromise?"
The anarchists spoke of the inherent corruption of power. Sentence by sentence, they tried to peel away the criminal labels the Moderates were plastering over them.
But the Moderates did not argue. They responded with something far more cruel: the weight of the past. They pointed to the 'regicides,' the 'heads of scandal,' the 'remnants of violence,' and the 'obstacles to legalization.' When spoken with such cold certainty, these weren't rebuttals; they were brands.
Then came the vote.
The chairman could not stop the hall from shaking even as he read the results. Jeers from one side, applause from the other, whistling from the shadows. As each tally was announced, someone spat a curse. The results were as predicted.
The NCTU faction lost every single seat on the Standing Committee. Not one remained.
The chairman's voice was dry, and that dryness was the peak of his cruelty. He spoke as if amputating human beings was merely a standard administrative procedure. In the NCTU section, someone kicked a chair. The wood groaned with a sharp crack.
The police moved in immediately. Under the pretext of preventing the spread of violence, they first restricted the movements of the losers. Marcos stood up. He took a single step toward the podium, but then stopped. To scream now was to scream from outside the boundaries of the process. His voice no longer had a place here.
Estella drew a long, ragged breath. Her eyes were steady, but her face had turned a ghostly white. Slowly, she turned to face the Moderate benches.
"If this is what you want, remember this: it is easy for you to sit where we once stood. But do you truly believe these seats of power are eternal?"
A Moderate delegate replied with a sneer, "You should worry about your own power. Politics is our business now."
At that moment, the statement sounded only like arrogance. After the session adjourned, the corridors were even more chilling. There were no handshakes, no nods of acknowledgment. Instead, manila envelopes were handed out. The weight of the paper bore down on their lives.
Personnel reassignment. Regional posting. On-site re-education. Organizational restructuring.
The language was temperate, but the content was exile. The lists were filled with the names of inland counties. The further from the coast, the further from the center of power, the more alien the names became. This wasn't a matter of geography; it was a matter of politics. It was the process of erasing the defeated from the map of influence.
Marcos folded the envelope and thrust it into his pocket. Estella suppressed the urge to shred the paper. Juan scanned his surroundings the moment he received his packet.
That night, several NCTU leaders gathered in a tavern. Some spoke through gritted teeth about arming for an uprising, blockading the ports, or instigating a general strike to paralyze the city. But reality was a cold dousing. The shadow of 1037 loomed too large. Public sentiment had shifted, and the police were prepared. Any movement in the streets would only complete the narrative the Moderates wanted: Violence. Terror. Infantile adventurism. The brand would be indelible.
In the end, they decided to leave. Departing looked like defeat, but staying meant certain erasure. They made their way to the train station.
The platform at dawn was damp, the lanterns dim. As the train pulled away, Lia Iberia receded. Through the windows, they watched the harbor cranes, the black masts, and the shimmering waves fade into the distance.
Up until that moment, the sea had been ordinary. It was so ordinary that one could believe it would remain that way forever.
As they moved further inland, the air grew dry. As the scent of the sea vanished, something in the corners of their minds loosened. Marcos could not tell if that sensation was relief or dread.
A few days later, in the marketplace of the village where they had been stationed, the first rumors began to circulate.
They said the coast had gone silent. They said the waves were eerily calm. They said communication between port cities was failing frequently. Some claimed the coastline was seething with something unseen.
People spoke in hushed tones. Since Iberia was a nation of sailors, many still held the superstition that speaking of such things would bring a curse. And then, about five months later, the moments when the wind simply died away began to stretch longer and longer.
From the far distance, a stillness rising from the ocean seemed to slowly consume even the darkness of the inland. Those losers, exiled by the party congress, felt with an unnatural clarity that the silence of that night was the beginning of something final.