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“You could still end this,” he said. “You know the harmonics better than any of us. You know how close we are.”

Caelith closed his eyes. He did know.

The wardlines keeping the Fracture closed were nearing harmonic lock. Once their alignment reached critical resonance, the Fracture would fold inward and rupture outward simultaneously. Centuries of containment would fail, and release would be total.

He’d seen what it had done to humans. The unmaking of them. Their bodies were not shaped to withstand raw fracture energy. Cells would unravel. Those closest would be unmade instantly; others would linger, disoriented, burning from the inside out as reality rewrote itself around them.

Cities would collapse, and time would shear. Even those who survived the initial rupture would eventually be hunted by Fracture-borne creatures, some far worse than the wraiths or the glasshounds. And yet, under the plan Caelith himself had once designed, the Umbralyn would endure.

That was the promise. But that was also the lie.

“And after?” Caelith asked quietly. “What do you suppose happens after?”

Safir hesitated.

“There will be balance,” he said at last. “We will reclaim what is ours.”

“And the children in Eryssan,” Caelith said. “The scribes. The healers. The many elderly who’ve never once raised a hand to us. What balance do they receive?”

Safir considered this. “None,” he said. “They were never the ones deciding our fate. Their deaths correct an imbalance they never noticed they were a part of.” He tilted his head. “You used to find that clarifying, I remember.”

Caelith winced. “There is a difference between justice and annihilation, Safir. Once, I couldn’t see it. I can now.”

Safir scoffed. “Spoken like someone who has forgotten what was taken from us.”

Caelith’s breath hitched. “I remember what was taken,” he said. “Better than anyone.”

He thought of his brother: hands steady, voice gentle, belief unbroken even as the Fracture surged around him.

Finish it, he had said.

“I always believed he meant to wipe out the human race,” Caelith said. “But what if he didn’t? My brother taught me to respect the Vow. He taught me to hold back my own hand. He lived among humans.”

Safir’s eyes hardened. “Your brother died for a fantasy.”

Caelith tried to rise, anger flaring, but the pressure of the wards slammed him back against the stone.

“We have earned the right to choose for ourselves, Caelith,” Safir said finally. “Not to beg for scraps of trust from a species that chains us and calls it partnership. Not to die protecting people who stone us in the street and act like it’s justified. We have bled for centuries under their Vow. We deserve the power to decide what happens next, not them.”

“And you call that justice,” Caelith said. “Deciding for them, the way they’ve always decided for us.”

“I call it the only kind of justice that has ever actually arrived,” Safir said. “Everything else was a request. This is a choice.”

He breathed in and lowered his voice.

“Caelith, I trusted you more than anyone. We all did. You brought us closer to this justice than any before you. And now you would undo it. For a human.”

Caelith refused to look at him. Safir leaned closer. “She will die,” he said. “With the rest of them.”

“Yes,” Caelith replied. “And that is why I can no longer help you.”

“You think saving her is salvation,” Safir said softly. “It is indulgence. It is selfish.”

“You speak of choice? This is the only thing that has ever been a choice,” Caelith spat back.

Safir crouched, so they were level. His voice came gently, which was somehow worse than anger. “I could end her before the alignment even completes, you know. Discreetly. Kindly, even. And you would feel nothing until it was already done, because that is how thoroughly we control what reaches you here.” He straightened. “But I have not done it yet. Ask yourself why, the next time you feel grateful to me for anything.”

Caelith lifted his gaze, furious. “Do not touch her. Do not dare it.”