The fracture did not begin with shouting.
It began with resignation.
Rhen saw it in the ledgers first—requests marked withdrawn, projects quietly paused, stewards stepping back without protest. The city still functioned, but its spine bent under a weight no one could name aloud.
People were choosing survival over ideals.
Nymera sensed it too, even from her bed, where weakness clung to her bones like winter damp. "They're preparing to let go," she murmured when Rhen visited her at dawn.
He sat heavily beside her. "They're tired."
"So am I," she said softly.
That morning, the restrained faction made their move.
They did not ask the city.
They offered themselves.
The message arrived stripped of ornament, raw with inevitability.
We will withdraw beyond the deep fault, the current conveyed. If we remove ourselves, retaliation ceases. The surface stabilizes.
Rhen's chest tightened painfully. "They're volunteering to disappear."
Nymera closed her eyes, tears leaking free. "They think this is mercy."
Skelda slammed her palm against the stone table when the council convened. "This is blackmail dressed as sacrifice."
"Or triage," a human delegate said quietly. "Fewer die."
Nymera forced herself upright, gripping the chair arms. "You don't solve violence by selecting who deserves to vanish."
Silence followed—heavy, accusing.
Rhen felt the judgment inside him churn, not into futures, but into a single unbearable truth: the system could not carry this alone anymore.
"They're right about one thing," he said slowly. "The cost is exceeding what neutrality can absorb."
Skelda's voice was rough. "So what—let them go?"
"No," Rhen said. "We change who pays."
All eyes turned to him.
The proposal was simple.
And devastating.
"We open the buffer," Rhen said, voice steady despite the tremor in his hands. "Not to the Deep Ones—to ourselves."
Nymera stared at him. "You mean—"
"I mean relocation," Rhen continued. "Shared. Voluntary. Surface communities move into the city. We concentrate infrastructure, shorten supply lines, reduce exposure."
Skelda inhaled sharply. "You're asking people to abandon their homes."
"Yes," Rhen said. "So others don't have to abandon existence."
The city erupted—not in anger, but grief.
A fisher stood, eyes wet. "My family has lived on that coast for generations."
Rhen met his gaze. "And I won't pretend this is fair."
Nymera reached for Rhen's hand, grounding him. "This spreads the cost," she said softly. "It makes neutrality visible."
"And unbearable," Skelda added.
"Yes," Rhen agreed. "That's the point."
The restrained faction pulsed with shock.
You would displace yourselves? the current conveyed. For us?
"For the surface," Nymera replied. "And for the future where no one is erased quietly."
The dominant faction reacted immediately—pressure spiking at the edges, furious at the reframing.
This is inefficient, it snarled through the currents.
Rhen answered calmly. "So is genocide."
The vote was the hardest yet.
People cried openly as names were called. Some voted no—unable, unwilling to leave what anchored them. Others voted yes through clenched teeth, knowing what staying would cost someone else.
When it passed, it did so not with hope—but with resolve sharpened by love for things that would be lost.
Nymera collapsed afterward, body shaking with sobs she could no longer hold back. Rhen held her tightly, feeling the bond ache with grief and pride intertwined.
"They'll hate us," she whispered.
"Some will," he replied. "Others will remember why."
The relocations began within days.
Slow. Careful. Humane.
Homes dismantled rather than destroyed. Shrines carried inland. Names recorded so nothing vanished unmarked. The city expanded not upward or outward—but inward, densifying around shared life.
The dominant faction pressed once more—and then faltered.
The pressure they relied on found no easy edges.
The retaliation slowed.
The restrained faction did not withdraw.
They waited.
One evening, as the city lights flickered on earlier than usual, Nymera stood beside Rhen on the bridge, wrapped in a borrowed cloak.
"You didn't sacrifice a people," she said quietly. "You asked them to sacrifice together."
Rhen stared at the water below. "I don't know if that makes it better."
"It makes it true," she said.
The water stirred faintly—not hunger, not threat.
Something closer to respect.
Far beneath the fjords, the dominant faction recalculated yet again, faced with a cost it could not externalize.
Neutrality had demanded its price.
And for the first time, the price was paid by choice—not by disappearance.