In a surveillance city where governance is theatre and applause is law, Calder Voss returns to the stage not for fame but to unmake a narrative empire. The regime’s dramaturge, Threnody Kade, scripts civic life—erasing names, commanding breath, and turning memory into spectacle. Calder assembles a ragged company in the shadowed wings of the Ninefold Playhouse to plant a counter-libretto: a series of small, illicit performances intended to fracture the script that keeps the populace compliant. As they hijack memorials, splice confession into the Chorus, and probe the underlights of the city, loyalties fray and a blank name begins to burn. Each act of dissent risks more than arrest; it risks the friends Calder cannot afford to lose and the fragile idea of self that binds the crowd. The central battle is not merely for power but for language itself—who gets to speak, who keeps silence, and whether a story can be stolen back. A tense, lyrical rebellion about identity, voice, and the cost of reclaiming truth.