Aya looked at the iron. Then she looked at the sky, where satellites hummed and the last traces of Willem’s heartbeat had long since faded into static.
The world did not cheer. It simply… carried on. nokings
Without kings, there were no figureheads to blame for bad harvests or distant wars. People began to notice that their grievances had always been projected upward onto faces that never truly ruled. The real power—economic, digital, ecological—had long since migrated into systems no single person could command. The death of the last king was a formality, not a liberation. Aya looked at the iron
And yet.