Night settled softly over the slums, the kind of quiet that didn't erase fear so much as set it down for a while. Lanterns flickered. Dinner smoke drifted over patched roofs. Somewhere, someone laughed too loudly, as if to reassure the dark that life still had a say in things.
Aiden sat on a low wall, elbows on his knees, staring at the street without really seeing it. He hadn't shattered. He hadn't broken. He just didn't know how to carry everything he now understood he could do.
Footsteps stopped beside him.
"You're doing that silent panic thing again," Seris said.
He didn't look at her. "Thought I was hiding it better."
"You are," she said. "From people who haven't done it before."
That earned a small, exhausted breath that might have been a laugh. They didn't rush into heavy talk. The quiet got to stay for a minute. Eventually, it was Aiden who cracked first.
"I don't feel proud," he admitted. "Or heroic. Or justified. I just feel… responsible. And I don't know if that's the right feeling, or if that's just fear pretending to be moral."
"It's the right feeling," Seris said gently. "If power doesn't scare you, that's when you shouldn't have it."
"And if someday it stops scaring me?"
She didn't soften the truth. "Then I'll stop you."
He looked at her finally. She didn't look threatening. She looked certain.
"But until then," she added, voice warm, "I'll stand with you first. Every time. As long as you keep caring like this."
He swallowed, relief loosening a knot inside his chest he hadn't realized he'd tied. "…thank you."
"You don't thank me for not abandoning you," she said. "That's just… decent."
For the first time since last night, he managed a real smile.
Across the courtyard, beneath a crooked awning that pretended to be shelter, Liora faced Ardent Thornewyn with arms crossed and jaw tight. She looked like she might bolt or punch something or cry, and wasn't sure which would be most appropriate.
"I need you to understand something," she said. "I don't care what the stories say about you. I don't care what they whisper in courts or sanctuaries. I care about what I saw. Those men broke. Not physically. Not magically. You dismantled them like… like you've done it before. A lot. And you didn't hesitate."
"Yes," Ardent said simply.
"That doesn't bother you?"
"It does," he replied. No dramatics. Just truth.
She stared, surprised by the lack of denial.
"I am very good at doing necessary things I do not like," he continued quietly. "I have had time to learn how to stand upright while they hurt."
"Then why didn't you stop? Why didn't you at least—"
"Hesitate?" he finished for her. "Because hesitation is a luxury people get when mistakes don't restructure the world."
That landed slowly.
"I didn't choose cruelty," he said softly. "I chose restraint. If I wanted cruelty, we would be having a very different conversation."
She hated that she understood him.
She hated that it made sense.
"They were still people," she whispered.
"Yes," he said gently. "That is why they lived."
Something inside her unclenched—not forgiveness, not approval—just understanding. He wasn't callous. He was tired. He was terrifying. He was careful.
And somehow, all three truths coexisted.
"I don't ever want to become like you," she admitted.
He smiled faintly. "I would consider it a personal loss if you did. You are meant to be kinder than me. That's why I teach. So people like you do not have to become what I am just to survive."
The breath she didn't realize she was holding escaped as a quiet laugh. "You're incredibly frustrating."
"So I've been told."
Time slipped past gently. Without planning it, without ceremony, the four of them ended up nearer to one another than when the evening began, like gravity had quietly redrawn a map.
No one declared anything.
No speeches.
No oaths.
But Seris sat a little closer to Aiden than before.
Liora stood nearer to Ardent without flinching.
Aiden breathed easier.
Ardent looked older and somehow… relieved.
They weren't a faction.
They weren't a rebellion.
They weren't destiny.
They were something far more dangerous.
People who refused to stop questioning themselves.
The city rested.
The night listened.
The universe watched.
And for once, it did not judge.
It simply waited.
Because kindness that thinks before it acts…
always worries fate far more than cruelty that doesn't.