The air in Veritas City had grown thick, not just with the humid summer heat, but with a tension that crackled like static electricity. Whispers had turned to murmurs, murmurs to shouts, and now, those shouts were coalescing into a roar. For weeks, Father Silas had skillfully woven a tapestry of hope and compassion, drawing in the downtrodden, the forgotten, the disaffected. He had spoken of a golden age, of equality, of a world cleansed of corruption. But the threads of his rhetoric were now being pulled taut, revealing a darker, more rigid underlay.