Prologue — The Red Pause
 
 
(as told by the same tired Guide)
 
Kindness applied: Doctrinal Orientation (Restricted)
Cost: Unmonetized doubt; uncounted minutes (automatic)
 
Wren found the Crow where she always did—under the hill, behind the cooled seam in the statue’s plinth where the brass smelled faintly of rain. Tin’s tick carried through the metal like a careful heartbeat.
 
“Cost before counsel,” she murmured, slipping a red wedge beneath the ledge. The invisible drain on “informal instruction” halved. Winkling Crow’s shoulders sagged the way a man sits when no one is grading his posture.
 
“You came back,” it said. Its beak tried to rhyme—pause, cause, applause—then gave up and clicked instead. “You want the holy version. The one with the name no one says in public.”
 
“I want how it really happened,” Wren said.
 
“No one in Emerald wants how it really happened,” the Crow replied. “But I’ll tell it.”
 
It tipped its head toward the colossal figure above them—Dorothy’s body for Justice, Lion’s blindfolded head, the scales burning with ruby brain and ruby heart. On her brow, the conical Hat of lenses and red glass hovered like a saint’s crown that could also be a trap.
 
“This city,” the Crow said, “was already lacquered long before Dorothy walked in. Optics over outcomes. Theater over relief. The Wizard rose because he fit the costume: a kind voice behind velvet, a ritual that could bless anything. The people were meant to love the show and call it mercy.”
 
“And the Witch?” Wren asked.
 
“Always the opposite pole,” the Crow said. “Westreach with its ugly, working rules. What is plain is what is fair. The kindest thing is what brings true relief. She hated the way Emerald hid harm behind pretty names. She hated the old saint the elites whispered about.”
 
“The saint whose name I’ve never heard,” Wren said.
 
The Crow’s eyes went matte. “You’ve heard her without hearing her. The name is Glinda. Sacred and reserved. Elites study her doctrine in rooms you’ll never see; the public gets diluted slogans as ‘Founders’ Principles.’ We don’t invoke her on the plaza because the Wizard has to be the savior the masses adore. That is how control keeps its shape: a silent scripture above, a smiling mascot below.”
 
Wren swallowed. “So where does Dorothy fit?”
 
“Into the seam,” the Crow said. “Between the lie the Wizard needed and the lie she needed.”
 
It shifted on the ledge. The metal hummed.
 
“Before Emerald, there was a storm,” it said. “A sky that decided to come inside. A girl named Dorothy crawled out of wreckage with glass in her hair and one hard law in her head: If we had all just stayed still, the storm would not have got us.”
 
“She made a religion out of stillness,” Wren said.
 
“She made a wound out of time,” the Crow corrected. “She wandered into Westreach and saw the Witch’s hourglass—honest, forward, counting without apology—and the red shoes that let a woman walk the seams of seconds. She asked if time could go backward.
 
“The Witch said, ‘No. Forward’s all we get. Use time to measure harm and prevent it, not to pretend it didn’t happen.’
 
“Dorothy heard no and translated it into not yet. She stole the hourglass and the slippers while the Witch slept. It wasn’t greed in her mind. It was a loan against a miracle: I will return them the moment I unwind the world and put my family back where they belong. No theft was ever done if it is undone forever.”
 
Wren could see the girl—dusty, desperate—clutching stolen time like a lung.
 
“She came here,” the Crow said, “into a city already staged like a sermon. The Wizard was a fraud with good acoustics. The shoes let her slip between beats. The hourglass let her feel where the curtain didn’t line up with the voice. She caught him mid-blessing and said the line no one in Emerald says out loud: You’re just a man behind a trick.”
 
“She could have toppled him,” Wren said.
 
“She could have,” the Crow agreed. “Instead she made a bargain. He gave her infrastructure and cover—access to the tower, the levers, the rooms where policy is baked to look like pastry. She would not expose him, and he would let her work: hold the city still until she found a way to reverse the storm.”
 
A slow breath rattled the Guide’s chest.
 
“And then he showed her the Book,” it said. “Not the hymn cards they pass at hospitals. The real one. The Book of L-Oz. Glinda’s canon, or what the elites swear is canon. Kept in the tower. Restricted to people who call themselves stewards. The name Glinda rarely spoken outside those rooms; her doctrine filtered downward as ‘principles’ and ‘guidance.’”
 
Tin’s metronome seemed to hesitate, as if listening.
 
“Dorothy read,” the Crow said. “She found lines that sounded like the Witch’s walls—mercy without relief is vanity; beauty is not always kind; the balance must favor the weak—and saw how the margins had buried them under gloss. She found other lines polished for use: Blessed is the stillness that spares you from the storm. The kindest thing is what appears kind. Endure a little hurt now, that all may be healed in Glinda’s Day.”
 
“She took the ones that matched her wound,” Wren said.
 
“She took the ones that let her not look at it,” the Crow said gently. “She taught the Wizard how to hide behind that scripture: Delay is devotion. Renamed harm is holy. If it hurts today, it will be counted as faith tomorrow. He blessed from his curtain. She worked the clock. The elites nodded from their salons: Glinda’s doctrine had always justified why comfort belonged to them.”
 
Above them, the Lady of Justice glittered, scales steady as a photograph.
 
“They set the Hat on Dorothy’s brow and called it the Lady’s,” the Crow went on. “Wired the lenses to the city’s clocks. When Dorothy tilted the hourglass, seconds thickened over Emerald like syrup. Hearings slowed. Sanctions dragged. Daisy Field drained by the breath and called it gentleness.”
 
“Did she still try to reverse time?” Wren asked.
 
“For a while,” the Crow said. “At night, alone, she bit her tongue until it bled and begged the glass to run backward. It never did. The slippers were never meant for constant wear; the Witch used them sparingly. Dorothy wore them like penance. The magic bit back—temporal drift, empathy lag, memory ghosting. The longer she lived out of sync, the easier other people’s pain felt like a design problem, not a cry.”
 
“And the Scarecrow?” Wren asked, glancing up at the ruby brain.
 
“He was the one who saw the joints,” the Crow said. “Pattern-sight. Hinges. Odds married to penalties. The kindness loop wired to billing. He told it out loud on the Promenade. They took his brain for the scales and unstitched him for parts. Dorothy kept something else: a bundle of his straw bound in red silk.”
 
“A wand,” Wren said.