Zyrán did not fall all at once.
That would have been simple. Obvious. Easy to justify.
Instead, his knees buckled as though the strength had merely… forgotten them. One moment he was standing at the sink, rinsing a cup that slipped from his fingers; the next, the room tilted, light thinning into a narrow thread.
Hael felt it before he saw it.
Not as danger.
As absence.
"Zyrán," he said, already moving.
The cup shattered against the floor, porcelain splitting cleanly. Zyrán reached instinctively for the counter and missed. His breath left him in a sharp, startled sound as the world dropped away.
Hael caught him.
Not gently.
Not carefully.
With both arms, with certainty, with the kind of reflex that did not ask permission from restraint.
Zyrán sagged against him, weight suddenly real and frightening. His skin was cold, his pulse racing unevenly beneath Hael's fingers.
"Hey—hey, stay with me," Hael said, lowering them both to the floor, bracing Zyrán against his chest.
Zyrán tried to speak. Failed. His vision tunneled, dark creeping in from the edges.
"I'm—" He swallowed. "I'm okay."
Hael pressed his forehead briefly to Zyrán's temple, grounding himself before panic could take shape. "No," he said quietly. "You're not."
Zyrán's fingers curled weakly into Hael's sleeve, the gesture unconscious but devastating.
"I didn't mean—" Zyrán whispered. "I just stood up too fast."
That wasn't it.
Hael knew better.
This was not clumsiness. Not hunger. Not illness in the human sense.
This was depletion.
The slow cost of refusal finally demanding its due.
Hael closed his eyes—and for the first time since the bridge, he let himself feel without searching for rules.
He did not flood the room with light.
He did not call power down from somewhere else.
He did something smaller.
He steadied.
He anchored his presence around Zyrán like a quiet perimeter, letting warmth bleed through skin and breath and proximity. Not fixing. Not enhancing.
Holding.
Zyrán's breathing eased fractionally.
"You said," Zyrán murmured, barely conscious, "you wouldn't interfere."
Hael swallowed. "I said I wouldn't take your choices away."
Zyrán's lashes fluttered. "Is this… taking?"
"No," Hael said. "This is keeping you alive long enough to keep choosing."
Zyrán exhaled, tension slipping from him as the darkness receded just enough to loosen its grip. His head tipped forward, resting against Hael's shoulder.
"I didn't want you to save me like before," he said faintly.
"I'm not," Hael replied.
His arms tightened—not possessive, not commanding. Human.
"I'm staying with you while you recover what you spent."
Zyrán was quiet for a long moment.
Then, softly: "That feels different."
Hael rested his chin lightly against Zyrán's hair. "It is."
They stayed there on the kitchen floor, shards of porcelain scattered around them like evidence of a moment no longer deniable.
Hael felt the truth settle fully now.
Non-intervention had limits.
So did endurance.
If he stepped back too far, Zyrán would disappear—not into darkness, but into exhaustion masquerading as strength.
And somewhere beyond the thin places of the world, Samael felt the shift—not triumph, not defeat.
A recalibration.
Because Hael had crossed a line.
Not into domination.
But into care that accepts responsibility.
And that, Samael knew, was a far more dangerous thing to oppose.