Sahr always knew when to lie to the world.
It was a discreet art.
A game of balance.
Never confrontational.
You don't lie by denying.
You lie by slightly shifting the truth,
just enough for others to feel smart for believing it.
That's how he lived.
With the clans.
With the Guardians.
With temporary alliances.
With prophecies too fragile to be taken seriously.
And with her.
Lunaya.
He never sought to possess her.
That, at least, he always told himself.
To possess is to want to reduce.
Wanting to confine.
Wanting to fix.
He preferred to observe.
To influence.
To create invisible lines of force around her,
so that her choices remained... compatible with the world.
With his world.
But today, walking behind Kael in this forest that no longer even tries to hide, Sahr understands something he has pushed away for too long.
He is no longer guiding.
He is following.
And this feeling is deeply foreign to him.
He watches Lunaya walk.
She doesn't turn around often.
Not because she is unaware.
Because she has stopped seeking validation.
Before, he could read her micro-hesitations.
The slightly suspended breaths.
The moments when she waited, unconsciously,
for someone to confirm that the step she was about to take was acceptable.
Not anymore.
Her step is slower, but more confident.
Like someone who knows that every movement will be noted,
no matter what she does.
And most seriously,
she accepts this notation.
Sahr clenches his jaw slightly.
This is not how things are supposed to be.
He remembers very clearly the moment when everything began to slip away from him.
Not in the Sanctuary.
Not in the clearing.
Long before that.
The day she chose Kael.
At the time, he had smiled.
A real smile, almost sincere.
The wolf was a logical choice.
Instinctive.
Predictable.
Kael doesn't calculate.
He protects.
Perfect for channeling unstable power.
Perfect for absorbing emotional outbursts.
Perfect for delaying fractures.
Sahr saw it as a solution.
He remembers thinking:
All right. She needs a wall. I'll be the structure behind it.
He hadn't understood.
She hadn't chosen Kael because he was safe.
She had chosen him because he didn't look at what she was becoming.
Sahr closes his eyes for a moment as he walks.
The forest around them pulses softly, like an attentive organism.
The witnesses are still there. He can feel it.
Not close. Not intrusive. Just... present.
He breathed in slowly.
It wasn't the first time he had been observed.
But it was the first time he had been observed without being able to redefine the framework.
And that irritated him more than he wanted to admit.
He thought back to Erynd.
To that name that everyone pronounced like an open wound.
Erynd, the sacrificed one.
Erynd, the mistake.
Erynd, the unstable variable.
Sahr never believed in this simplified version.
Erynd wasn't reckless.
He was radical.
He saw something that others refused to look at:
that the system couldn't absorb Lunaya without transforming itself.
So he cut.
Clumsily.
Painfully.
But with brutal lucidity.
Sahr understood this very early on.
And he chose another path.
Not rupture.
Adjustment.
Not visible sacrifice.
Slow corrosion.
He thought he was smarter.
A brief laugh escapes him. Without joy.
How ironic.
It is precisely this intelligence that has become useless.
He observes Kael.
The wolf advances, tense but steady.
Not concerned with the gaze of the world.
Not interested in invisible structures.
Kael does not try to understand why they are being watched.
He simply prepares himself for the moment,
when it will become dangerous.
Sahr has always despised this simplicity.
Today, he envies it.
There is one thing Sahr has never told anyone.
Not Dravik.
Not Lunaya.
Certainly not Kael.
He always knew the world would eventually react.
But he believed he could choose how.
He believed he could slow it down.
Deflect it.
Redirect it toward secondary conflicts.
Create screens.
But Lunaya did exactly the opposite.
She didn't try to hide.
She didn't negotiate.
She responded.
And by responding, she validated the interaction.
Sahr clenches his fists.
"Damn..." he murmurs to himself.
The worst part isn't that the world is watching her.
The worst part is that the world takes her seriously.
Not as an immediate threat.
Not as an anomaly to be eliminated.
As a hypothesis.
And hypotheses aren't destroyed right away.
They're tested.
Sahr realizes, with almost painful clarity, that if he spoke now,
he really would have nothing to offer.
No miracle plan.
No elegant manipulation.
No third option.
He could only tell the truth.
And the truth is this:
They have passed the point where someone like him is supposed to be useful.
He looks at Lunaya one last time, and something cracks softly inside him.
Not desire.
Not fascination.
Respect.
A dangerous respect.
Because it implies acceptance.
And accepting, for Sahr, has always been the hardest thing to do.
He finally understands what he is losing.
Not his power.
Not his influence.
His lead.
He is no longer the one who sees before others.
He is the one who sees at the same time.
And for the first time in a very long time...
Sahr does not smile.
He walks.
He observes.
And he prepares himself, not to control what is coming,
but to decide how far he is willing to go
when manipulation is no longer enough.