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Our blades met with a crash of steel. Once, twice—I parried desperately, my wounded shoulder making me slow. Clumsy. My left arm was useless, forcing me to fight one-handed against an opponent at full strength.

Blood loss was making me dizzy. My vision swam.

On the third strike, my blade found the gap in his leather armor.

This boy had done nothing wrong. He had followed orders, trusted his superior, believed in the cause he'd been taught to serve. His only crime was loyalty—loyalty to me, to the mission, to all he’d been taught was righteous.

And I had killed him for it.

Hayes's eyes went wide, disbelief replacing fury. His sword clattered to the ground. Blood frothed at his lips as he looked up at me, confusion and betrayal warring in his expression.

“Why?” he whispered, barely audible above the sounds of battle.

“Because they're innocent.” The confession broke as I held him. “Because you're innocent too, and I've made you complicit in murder.”

Hayes's breath came in short gasps. “Your. . . your mother was truly. . .”

“A Weaver,” I finished. “A woman who perished trying to protect people such as these. She would have wept to see what I became in her name.”

Something flickered in his dying eyes—not forgiveness. I didn't deserve that, but perhaps understanding. “I. . . I would have followed. . .”

“I know,” I said softly, supporting his weight as his strength faded. “I know you would have obeyed orders. That's what made you a good soldier.”

He tried to speak again, but only blood came. His eyes fixed on mine, holding my gaze as the light faded from them. The boy who'd looked up to me, who'd trusted me to lead him righteously, died in my arms with my blade in his chest.

The weight of it—not just his death, but the betrayal it represented—threatened to crush me. This was the price of choosing the right side too late.

Steel rang against steel as the magical bindings began to fail and my hunters pressed their attack. A rifle shot from Morrison's position splintered the bark of an oak where one of the Weavers had taken shelter. An older weaver, her face pale with exhaustion from the sustained magical effort, lifted her arms again to call the threads, but I could see her strength failing with each passing moment.

Morrison's command cracked across the clearing, “Davies! Thomson! The Captain has been ensorcelled by their witchcraft! Take him alive if possible!”

I looked up from Hayes's still form to see my former brothers advancing on me with weapons drawn, their faces grim with purpose and betrayal. These weren't faceless enemies—Davies had taught me to read tracks in my first year of service. Morrison had been the closest thing to a true father I'd known since childhood.

And I had led them here, knowing full well what it could cost them.

“Stand down!” I shouted, Hayes's blood still wet on my hands. “All of you, stand down!”

I stood swaying, Hayes's blood on my blade, my own blood pooling at my feet. The world tilted sideways.

“Cannot do that, sir,” Morrison called back, his weathered face heavy with sorrow. The man who'd taught me to track, who'd shared his rations when I was a green recruit—he looked at me now with the disappointment of a parent watching his child fall from grace. “Whatever enchantment they've placed upon you, we'll sort it out back at the Iron Spire. But you're coming with us, lad.”

The old weaver seized the moment of confusion. She flung her arms wide, and threads erupted from her fingertips in a dazzling cascade of golden light. The magical strands whipped through the air from tree root to treetop, stitching together reality into a shimmering tunnel that led toward a ravine. Weavers began escaping through it.

The forest trembled around us as if the earth protested such manipulation of its natural order. Shadows danced wildly beneath the sudden brilliance. The air turned thin and strange.

“August, now!” The woman cried, swaying on her feet as the threads around her flickered. “Bring Lily through before the passage fails!”

I sheathed my sword. The movement sent lightning through my shoulder, but I didn't hesitate. I gathered Lily's limp form into my arms. For twenty-seven years, I had been my father's blade. I had cut where he pointed, bled where he demanded, believed every lie he fed me about honor and duty and the monsters hiding in the dark.

But the only monster I'd ever truly known wore my father's face. And the woman dying in my arms had shown me what it meant to fight for something real.

I had killed a boy who trusted me. I would carry that weight forever.

But I would not let her die for the sin of being the first person to see me clearly. She was everything I shouldn't want. And the only thing I refused to lose.

My boots pounded along the woven pathway, each step sending threads of golden light crackling beneath my feet like frost on a windowpane. The magical tunnel stretched and contracted around us with each of my heartbeats, reminding me that this miracle was temporary—and costly.

Each stride sent fresh agony through my wounded shoulder. My grip on Lily was weakening—my left arm had gone completely numb, and I had to support her full weight with my right arm alone.