Chapter 1 #2
I stop. Korr doesn’t. He moves ahead enough to put himself half a step ahead of us, his body angling so the open space behind is cut off. Not blocking. Guarding.
“Say it again,” he says mildly.
The man falters, then rallies when a few others move closer behind him. Human. Middle-aged. Worn thin by fear and hunger and too many nights without walls.
“The hybrid,” he says, jabbing a finger toward Rverre. “She’s the one causing this. We’ve heard what she does. How she is. Now she’s wandering off on her own. What is she calling down on us now?”
Murmurs ripple through the crowd and I feel Rverre tense.
“She’s a child,” I say, keeping my voice level. “And she didn’t wander. She followed something she doesn’t understand yet.”
“That’s the problem,” another voice cuts in. “None of us understands it. And we’re the ones who pay when things go wrong.”
Korr turns his head slowly. The movement alone quiets them.
“You’re afraid,” he says in a tone that is not accusing, but also not gentle.
He’s stating facts. A dangerous thing to do. The first man stiffens.
“We’ve earned the right to be.”
“No,” Korr replies. “You’ve earned the responsibility not to make it worse.”
A few people scoff. Someone laughs, sharp and brittle.
“Easy for you to say,” a woman snaps. “You’re not human.”
The words hang there, ugly and deliberate. Illadon steps forward. I catch his arm before he can speak. Korr doesn’t move, but something in him shifts. A tightening. A stillness that wasn’t there before.
“No,” he agrees. “I’m not.”
He takes one step closer to the man who spoke. Just one.
“You want to talk about blame?” Korr continues. “Then talk about who opened the tunnels. Who ignored the warnings. Who thought the ground itself would forgive them.”
The man pales.
“That’s not—”
Korr closes the distance in two strides.
It happens fast after that. The man reaches for a knife. Korr disarms him in a single, brutal motion. Twisting his wrist fast and hard. Tendons stretch too far and the blade drops into the dirt with a sound that echoes far too loudly.
Korr doesn’t strike again because he doesn’t need to. The man screams and drops to his knees. Korr crouches, bringing himself eye level.
“You don’t threaten children,” he says quietly. “Not here. Not ever.”
He rises and steps back, already done. Silence crashes down. No one rushes forward. No one argues. Even the ones who had been nodding along look away now, faces tight with the sudden understanding of consequences.
I let out a harsh breath I’d been holding. Rverre presses closer to me. Illadon’s hands are clenched into fists at his side, shaking.
“Enough.”
The voice cuts through everything. Calista.
She pushes through the crowd, Ladon at her side, Jolie just behind them. Leadership in motion always carries weight, but this—this is different. This is damage control.
“What happened?” Calista demands.
The injured man sobs something incoherent, but no one moves to help him. Korr turns to her, expression unreadable.
“He threatened this child,” he says, motioning towards Rverre.
Calista’s gaze flicks to Rverre and Illadon then to me before returning to Korr.
“Did he?” she asks carefully.
“Yes.”
No embellishment. No defense.
Jolie moves to Rverre immediately, dropping to her knees and pulling her close. Rverre clings to her for half a second and then looks back at me. That, more than anything, hurts. Calista exhales slowly.
“Get him to the medic,” she orders, gesturing to the sobbing man. “Then clear this area.”
People hesitate, looking at one another until Korr turns his head. That gets them and they move.
As the crowd disperses, the camp feels smaller somehow. Tighter. Like everyone has realized at the same time that this place can’t hold what’s happening to us. Calista’s attention settles on me.
“Talia,” she says. “Walk with us.”
It isn’t a request. Korr steps forward at the same time I do.
“I’ll escort,” he says.
Calista studies him for a moment, then nods. “Fine.”
Illadon starts to follow.
Ladon puts a hand on his shoulder. “No son, not this part.”
Illadon bristles, but Rverre lays her hand on his bicep and he stays. I look back once as we walk away. The two of them standing side-by-side, older than their years by far. Growing up much too fast because Tajss will tolerate nothing less.
The camp is already reshaping itself around the incident. People whispering. People watching. Lines hardening where there shouldn’t be lines at all. And beneath it all, the sense that something has shifted irreversibly.
We approach the council tent and Calista glances at me sideways.
“Thank you for intervening,” she says.
“I didn’t,” I say honestly. “He did.”
Her mouth tightens. “That’s what worries me.”
I glance at Korr. He’s watching the horizon even now, posture rigid, shoulders drawn tight as the valley opens ahead. He hasn’t looked back once. I suspect that whatever Rverre heard out there didn’t just call her. It cracked something open.
And I have the sinking certainty that by the end of the day, none of us will be able to pretend this it was nothing.