Not everyone left.
Rhen knew that before the first report reached him. He felt it in the city's rhythm—the uneven pull where communities should have been thinning evenly but instead snagged, resistant, anchored by fear and memory.
"They won't go," Skelda said quietly, laying the tablets on the table. "Three coastal enclaves. Flat refusal."
Nymera closed her eyes. "I don't blame them."
Rhen didn't either. Homes were not coordinates; they were stories layered into stone and tide. Asking people to leave was asking them to grieve while still breathing.
"They're demanding exemptions," Skelda continued. "Special corridors. Extra reinforcement."
Rhen exhaled slowly. "Which defeats the point."
Nymera nodded. "Neutrality can't be selective."
The city convened again—not to vote, but to listen. Representatives from the refusing enclaves stood before the bowl, faces hard with resolve.
"We stayed through storms," one elder said. "We buried our dead here. You don't get to tell us to vanish."
Rhen met his gaze. "I'm not asking you to vanish. I'm asking you to move so others don't."
A woman stepped forward, fists clenched. "So we become the sacrifice?"
"No," Nymera said softly. "You become part of it."
Anger flared. "That's just prettier words."
Silence fell.
Rhen felt the judgment inside him settle into something brutal and honest. "If we grant exemptions," he said, "we teach the dominant faction that pressure buys carve-outs. They'll target you next."
The words hurt. They were meant to.
Skelda added, "And we won't militarize your homes. That makes you shields."
The enclaves withdrew—furious, grieving, unconvinced.
That night, the dominant faction moved again.
Not at the buffer.
At the refusing enclaves.
Pressure spiked just offshore—carefully calibrated. Nets tore. Boats capsized. No deaths. Just enough fear to feel intentional.
Nymera gasped as the currents screamed through her senses. "They're punishing refusal."
Rhen's hands curled into fists. "They're trying to force us to choose."
Skelda's voice was tight. "If we intervene, we violate neutrality. If we don't—"
"—we let people be hurt," Nymera finished.
The Compassion Exception flared on the ledger, amber and insistent.
Rhen stared at it, heart hammering. "This is their counterstrategy."
Nymera looked at him, eyes blazing with a familiar, dangerous clarity. "Then we answer it without breaking the framework."
"How?" Skelda demanded.
Nymera straightened despite the tremor in her legs. "By telling the truth out loud."
The broadcast went live within minutes.
Nymera stood at the basin—not glowing, not commanding—just present.
"To the communities refusing relocation," she said, voice steady despite the pain threaded through it, "we will not abandon you. But we will not pretend your safety can be guaranteed while pressure is applied elsewhere."
She turned slightly, addressing the fjords beyond.
"And to those applying pressure: your tactics are visible. They will not fracture our resolve. They will harden it."
The water roiled—not violently, but with displeasure.
Nymera continued, "We offer an alternative. Immediate, escorted relocation—temporary. Your homes will be marked, maintained, and returned when stability allows. Refusal will not be punished—but neither will it be shielded."
Rhen felt the weight shift—heavy, but aligned.
"This is not coercion," he added, stepping beside her. "It's consent with consequences stated plainly."
The dominant faction answered, sharp and cold.
You weaponize honesty.
"Yes," Nymera replied. "Because you weaponize harm."
Silence followed—tense, brittle.
Then the pressure offshore eased—slightly.
Enough to be noticed.
The refusing enclaves did not all agree.
But some did.
Boats turned toward the city under escort, lights bright against dark water. Others stayed, faces set, knowing what they risked.
Rhen felt the ache of it lodge deep in his chest.
Exhaustion claimed Nymera soon after. She collapsed into a chair, breath shallow, hands shaking.
Skelda cursed softly. "You're burning yourself out."
Nymera smiled weakly. "I'm not using power. I'm using truth. It still costs."
Rhen knelt before her, voice low. "You don't have to keep stepping into this."
She met his eyes. "If I don't, they'll try to turn you into the exception."
He huffed a breathless laugh. "They already tried."
Before dawn, a final message arrived.
Not from the dominant faction.
From within the deep itself—fractured, layered, urgent.
The split widens, the restrained faction conveyed. Your refusal to grant exemptions weakened their leverage. They argue now—not about conquest, but containment.
Nymera closed her eyes, relief and sorrow braided together. "They're losing consensus."
Rhen nodded. "And gaining desperation."
The city slept fitfully, half-empty neighborhoods echoing with memory, new arrivals finding space among strangers who would soon become neighbors.
Neutrality held.
Not because it was safe.
But because it refused to lie.
As the sun rose pale over the fjords, Rhen stood with Nymera on the bridge, both of them quiet.
"You think this ends?" she asked.
"No," he said honestly. "But I think it changes."
Below them, the water flowed—scarred, divided, still dangerous.
And in that division, for the first time, lay the possibility of an ending that did not require disappearance.