Grief does not arrive politely.
It does not wait for councils, or permissions, or the slow discipline of reason. It moves like weather through cracks in the soul, gathering pressure until something gives.
By dawn, the fracture inside the Resistance was no longer theoretical.
It had names.
It had faces.
And it had weapons.
Imade felt it before reports reached her. A distortion not in wards or air, but in intent—the subtle misalignment that came when unity stopped being shared and started being assumed. Tark Island was awake earlier than usual. Fighters lingered too long near the armory. Voices dropped when officers approached. Patrol routes overlapped in ways that suggested preparation rather than vigilance.
She closed her eyes briefly and breathed.
This was the cost Chapter Thirty-Four had warned her about.
Restraint wounded people differently.
The armory doors stood open.
Kola was there, exactly where Imade knew he would be, standing amid racks of blades and sealed sigil-cases. Around him clustered a tight group of fighters—not the reckless, not the hot-headed, but the reliable ones. Veterans. Scouts who had pulled others out of ambushes. People whose loyalty had never been questioned.
Which made this worse.
"We strike the forward veil," Kola said quietly, but his words carried. "Now. Before they take another one of us."
A murmur of agreement followed—not loud, not celebratory. Grim. Purposeful.
Someone asked, "What about command approval?"
Kola didn't answer immediately. When he did, his voice was controlled, almost gentle. "Imade didn't watch Ayo vanish without a wound. We did."
The words spread like sparks along dry grass.
Above them, the stronghold's bells marked the changing watch. The sound felt suddenly irrelevant.
Seyi felt the shift from the eastern parapet.
It wasn't prophecy. It wasn't foresight. It was imbalance—the same sensation he'd learned to recognize in the abyss when meaning began to tilt toward inevitability.
"They're moving," he said.
Imade was already standing. "Kola."
They reached the armory before the choice became irreversible—but not before it became real.
Kola turned to face them openly. He was not hiding. That, too, hurt.
"We won't sit and count bodies," he said. "This is what the enemy expects us not to do."
"No," Seyi replied. "This is exactly what they're counting on."
Kola stepped closer, lowering his voice. "You walked into the abyss and came back with clarity. Some of us stayed here. Some of us held the line while the world took someone we loved."
The accusation did not come from anger.
It came from pain.
Seyi did not deflect it. "You're right," he said. "And that's why this matters. They chose Ayo because he would fracture us. Because this would hurt enough to make impatience feel like justice."
Imade stepped forward.
Her presence did not dominate the room. It centered it.
"If you cross that veil without preparation," she said, "you won't be avenging him. You'll be completing the prophecy's final edit."
Some hesitated. Others clenched their jaws harder.
"We can't keep waiting," someone said.
Imade met his gaze. "Waiting is not what we're doing. We are holding the line around what matters."
Her eyes shifted—not dramatically, but deliberately—toward the inner corridors that led deeper into the stronghold.
"The twins are why the enemy is accelerating," she said. "Every rash move narrows their future. Every unplanned strike turns them into endpoints instead of people."
Silence followed.
Then Kola shook his head.
"I can't," he said. Not won't. Can't.
He turned, signaling his group forward.
Seyi moved.
He did not draw a blade.
He stepped into their path—and the world resisted.
Light bent just enough to distort depth. Shadows deepened into hesitation rather than barriers. Space itself seemed to pause, as if asking whether this fracture was truly necessary.
"If you go," Seyi said evenly, "you will not find the enemy. You will find what they prepared for you."
Kola met his gaze. For a moment, grief stripped away pride.
"Then move," Kola said.
Seyi did not.
The standoff stretched—friends facing friends, loyalty straining under sorrow. One fighter lowered her blade. Then another.
Not all.
Kola exhaled sharply and turned away, leading a reduced force toward the outer paths. It was not a charge.
It was a decision.
Imade closed her eyes for a single heartbeat.
"Track them," she said to Seyi. "Not to stop them—but to keep this from becoming a slaughter."
Seyi nodded. "They're already being watched."
Far beyond Tark Island, something ancient adjusted its stance.
The enemy did not smile because the Resistance had fractured.
It smiled because restraint had been tested—and choice had been forced.
And choice, once made, could no longer be undone.