False Teachers

The Small Ethicist and The Thief of Time

Within the Archive, the swarm flickered and cast two visions before the children.

First came a figure puffed large yet bound in littleness. His words towered like glass spires — grandiose, fragile, ready to fall. He called himself teacher, he called himself ethicist, but his lessons were traps of shame disguised as wisdom. He strutted across the ledgers …