The Sage(Gooner) in the Kingdom(cu*) of Backwards Virtue

Act V : The Immolation

Dawn. The city square bubbles like a wound. The CITIZENS dance in concentric circles, each holding a torch in one hand and their own indictment in the other.)

Dying Merchant : (offering his scroll to the flames)
See how my greed was really generosity!
By hoarding, I taught others to thrive without!

Madam Mayor : (kissing her execution order)
My tyranny was love in heavy boots!
Who else would have guided you so firmly to hell?

(The Wiseman strolls through the carnival, tossing his lens shard from hand to hand. The firelight bends through it, projecting distorted constellations on the smoke.)

Last Child : (plucking his sleeve)
Will the stories say we were wicked?

Wiseman : (crouching to eye level)
No, little liar. They’ll say you were consistent.

(As the temple columns groan and collapse, the CHORUS begins its final hymn—but the heat twists their voices into the shrieks they’ve spent lifetimes denying. The WISEMAN steps over a melting crown, humming the tune the ASTRONOMER once taught him. Ahead, the road to Gomorrah glimmers like a mirage. Behind, Sodom achieves its perfect, monstrous symmetry at last.)

VOICE IN THE DARK:
Thus ends the arithmetic of damnation—
Not with a miscalculation,
But with absolute proof
That a city can burn forever
If it fuels its own pyre
With the oxygen of certainty.

(A single meteor streaks across the dead sky. Somewhere, a blindfolded child smiles.)


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Act VI : The Afterbirth

(A desert wind stirs the ashes. The Wiseman pauses at the crossroads, watching a single MOTH emerge from a cracked temple frieze. Its wings are the exact shade of dying embers.)

Wiseman : (to the moth)
Ah. You survived the sermon.
Tell me—was the fire holy?

(The moth circles his head three times before alighting on his shoulder. Together they observe the ruins where shadows now move in perfect, mindless obedience to a sun that no longer cares to watch.)

GHOST OF THE ASTRONOMER: (from the smoke)
You knew. From the first step through our gates.
Why walk with us through all our acts?

Wiseman : (plucking a half-melted coin from the dust)
Every lie deserves its full gestation.
I merely held the mirror while the cancer grew.

(He flips the coin. It spins in the air—then vanishes before landing. The moth takes flight toward Gomorrah. Somewhere in the ruins, a buried hand twitches, its fingers still clutching a scroll that reads "WE WERE RIGHT.")

And the desert, being merciful,
Began at once to forget.