Lily did not show a map of the fighting. She gave the floor to the people emerging from the drains.
The dyer described how Li family contractors had burned the debt archive. A Guild assessor confirmed that the queen's cage had been prepared in advance. A freed fighter described the artificial circuit that had forced him to move through pain.
Every statement was accompanied by a contract seal from the archive.
Lily asked brief questions. She did not let people turn the broadcast into rumour or revenge. Where was the cage? Who gave the order? What did the seal look like? What happened to you personally?
When the dyer called Kane a murderer, she stopped him.
"Did you see him kill anyone?"
"No. I saw men carrying his orders."
"Then say that."
That discipline made the testimony stronger. Kane could not destroy it by finding a single inaccuracy.
In response, the Guild showed footage of Rex leaving through the shattered window and called the fallen fighters dead. A Guild assessor submitted the medical log: all of them had survived. The lie lasted less than a minute.
Kane tried to shut down the channel, but copies were being relayed through the academy, the slums and Cole's military node. Each one he closed strengthened the other two.
At the central academy, Lenny gathered the students he had led out of the arena. They used the training beasts for evacuation, not combat. A crushing ape lifted rubble. Spirits of light marked people trapped beneath the wreckage.
At first the rector ordered them back. Then he saw the footage from the square and opened the academy shelters to every district.
Kane activated the reserve seals. They no longer covered the whole city, but they took complete control of the beasts in the central district.
One of them, a military griffin, seized Lily and carried her above the square.
The swarm could kill the beast, but the girl would fall.
Styx asked the scouts to slip through the feathers and reach the collar. The griffin beat its wings, tearing the mosquitoes away in the rush of air. A wounded captain with a scorched wing clung to Lily's belt and guided the others.
The collar cracked.
The griffin came to its senses, saw the human in its talons and began to descend. It released Lily just above the ground.
The wounded captain fell beside her.
Styx descended to him. The tiny body no longer moved.
She gained no points, no ability and no new brood. Only the memory of the creature that had reached the tower and restored her voice.
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