Where the City Displays Its Obedience
The Living Galleries were not created as punishment.
They were created as architecture.
In the years following the Forever Night, the Ascendancy faced a problem that violence alone could not solve. Fear worked quickly, but it decayed. Executions produced martyrs. Disappearances bred rumor. Terror required upkeep, and upkeep required resources.
The Galleries solved this.
They were installed gradually—first as decorative balconies along major routes, then as permanent fixtures attached to administrative buildings, factories, and transit corridors. At a distance, they resemble ornate facades: wrought iron, brass supports, velvet-draped rails. Close inspection reveals restraints integrated into the design. Drainage channels hidden beneath filigree. Acoustic baffles that ensure sound carries only as far as intended.
Those placed within the Galleries are not executed.
They are maintained.
The subjects are chosen carefully. Political dissidents are rare; they draw attention. More often, the Galleries display officials who failed publicly, guild leaders who resisted integration, priests who spoke too loudly, engineers who sabotaged quietly. The crime is always framed as procedural failure rather than moral opposition.
This matters. The message is not obedience or death.
It is obedience or permanence.
Once installed, a subject is stabilized through blood regulation and controlled vitae infusion. Aging halts. Wounds close incompletely. Pain remains present but non-lethal. Sensation is preserved because sensation is the point. Each individual is calibrated to remain conscious, responsive, and visibly aware of their surroundings.
They can see the city.
They can hear it.
They cannot participate in it.
The Ascendancy does not conceal this process. That would invite questions. Instead, the Galleries are framed as civic preservation—examples of mercy extended too far, of lives spared at great expense. Citizens are told that maintaining the Galleries is costly, that the alternative would be simpler. This framing is effective. People learn to be grateful that executions are rare.
Over time, the Galleries became landmarks.
“Turn left at the third balcony.”
“Meet beneath the woman who never sleeps.”
“The bridge with the old merchant.”
Children grow up recognizing faces they have never seen move. Workers pass beneath the same figures daily and stop noticing them entirely. The presence of the Galleries becomes background noise—part of the city’s texture, like steam vents or clock chimes.
This is their true function.
The Living Galleries normalize eternity under observation.
The subjects are not allowed to scream endlessly. Vocalization is regulated. Outbursts are dampened chemically or mechanically. When permitted, sound is timed to coincide with public events—processions, feedings, performances at the Opera—where it blends into the city’s existing noise.
Silence is more common.
In rare cases, a subject is removed. This is never announced. The space is cleaned, reinforced, and prepared for reuse. Citizens notice the absence only briefly, if at all. A familiar face vanishes, replaced by another whose name they never learn.
Silver is forbidden near the Galleries.
Not because it would kill the subjects, but because it disrupts stabilization. Exposure causes pain responses that cannot be dampened, memory surfacing that cannot be controlled. In one documented incident, a subject exposed to silver began to speak coherently for the first time in years, describing details of the Ascendancy’s internal processes before expiring.
The report was sealed. The Gallery was relocated.
The Resistance avoids the Galleries unless necessary. Freeing a subject is possible, but rarely wise. Years suspended in partial sensation leave most unable to function. Some beg to be returned. Others cannot tolerate unstructured time. A few die immediately when removed, their bodies unable to resume ordinary decay.
This is not seen as a failure.
It reinforces the lesson.
The Living Galleries are not meant to punish the condemned.
They are meant to educate the living.
They teach that opposition does not end in death or redemption. It ends in display—in becoming part of the city’s surface, visible and irrelevant, present and powerless.
Under the Forever Night, the Ascendancy does not need everyone to obey.
They only need everyone to see what happens when someone is kept.