Nothing Kind
Priya had said run.
Priya had been very clear about running.
Elias grabbed Dorian’s good arm and hauled him back toward the wheat line while Mira put herself between them and the old Sovereign, knife out, expression gone completely flat and professional in a way that told Elias she’d done this kind of retreat before and hated every second of it just as much each time.
“Toby, cover—” she started, and then stopped, because Toby wasn’t moving.
He was staring at the old Sovereign, at the grey creeping slowly up Dorian’s arm, and his face had lost every trace of the easy humor Elias had met him with an hour and a lifetime ago.
It wasn’t fear exactly.
It was recognition.
He blinked back into himself like surfacing from underwater.
“Right. Sorry. Cover, yes.” His voice had none of its usual lift.
He fell in beside her anyway, competent, fast, whatever had cracked open in him shoved back down hard enough that Elias only caught the edge of it.
The current farmboy — the *real* one, the one still supposed to have a story left to live — put himself in front of all of them, sword raised, shaking.
“You don’t want to hurt them,” he said to the thing wearing his old face.
“You want *me*. It’s not their fault they’re in this chapter.”
The boy blocked it — barely, sparks of gold and grey scattering off crossed blades — and for one terrible second Elias watched two versions of the same person try to erase each other over ownership of a story neither of them had asked to be born into.
“Ideas,” Priya’s voice had said, back in the briefing room, *you flag errors, you don’t correct them, that’s Redactor-level authority* — and Elias had every intention of obeying that, right up until he watched Dorian’s arm go another inch greyer and understood, with total clarity, that following the rule meant watching someone finish disappearing in front of him.
He’d spent years writing scenes exactly like this one.
He knew, with the specific, useless expertise of a man who had failed to finish eleven chapters of the exact same premise, precisely what this kind of story needed at precisely this beat — not more force, not a bigger sword.
It needed someone to *read it again*.
To care that it kept going.
He had no idea if that was a real weapon here or just a metaphor he was about to get killed for believing in.
But he stepped forward anyway, both hands empty, straight into the space between two swords