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His eyes close, and for a moment he doesn’t speak. The air changes. The man who stepped in with a bottle and a toast is gone, and what remains is something rawer. Not the commander who took up the battle when I fell, but the man behind it that no one sees.

“Chaos.” The word is both simple and complex. “The Authority didn’t just tell the world you were dead. They made a ritual of it. A warning. They dressed the body in your robes—black, embroidered, your seal stitched at the collar. They cut the hair to match yours. Bound the hands behind the back like they had you in Ashenvale. Then they lit the pyre and made us watch.”

His voice doesn’t shake, but it sinks lower. He isn’t looking at me anymore, he’s reliving that moment.

“I was so sure it wasn’t you, that you tricked them … right until the moment they brought you out.” His fingers tighten around his glass. “They traveled around the settlements closest to Ashenvale, and paraded your body through them. Then everyone was instructed to return to the city for the ceremony. No one was allowed to leave or speak. We had to stand there while the fire rose, and the smell of it—burning leather, burning flesh—soaked into our clothes and skin.”

He drains his glass and refills it.

“After, there was food. Music. A declaration read aloud about the end of heresy. People clapped. The Veinwardens who witnessed it were still, silent. I couldn’t move. I thought if I did, I’d vomit in front of everyone. They would have executed me. So I waited. I held it until I got back here.”

He lifts the goblet to his lips.

“I spent the night on the floor. I couldn’t stop shaking, Icouldn’t speak. I tried to scrub the smell out of my skin. But it was there for days. Mira, Lisandra, myself … we locked ourselves in here, and we mourned. And all the time, we kept thinking … we never protected you. We never said goodbye. We never buried you. We just … watched.”

I don’t speak. There’s nothing I can say that will lessen the weight of what he’s carried in my name. It won’t change how he feels. His faith. His failure.

They mourned me while I still breathed. Watched me burn, while I stood behind impenetrable walls, alive and bound and helpless to stop it. And they kept going. Not because they believed they could win, but because stopping would have made the fire true.

I look at the man before me, who stood in the ashes and continued to lead. There's no apology I can give him. Only the knowledge that I remember. That I will not forget what it cost him to survive me.

Reaching for the bottle, I refill his glass, then mine, and set it down between us.

It’s the closest I can come to say ‘I see you. And I am still here.’

He takes another sip from his glass before continuing. “I gathered what remained of your inner circle. Lisandra, Tallis, Mira, Kelren, Narina. We debated whether to continue or go dark. The votewasn’tunanimous.”

“Narina wanted to go dark,” I guess. She never let conviction override caution. When others followed instinct, she counted risk.

“Yes. She said with the increased ferocity of the purges, and without your abilities, we wouldn’t be able to keep people safe.”Varam’s expression darkens. “We disagreed, but she was right in the end. We lost the eastern knots within months. Authority trackers found them without your protection.”

Anger surges through me at the thought of those lost because I wasn’t there to shield them all. Faces I trained, trusted, stationed across the eastern outposts flash through memory. They died because I wasn’t there. Because they still believed in what I died fighting for.

“But you continued.”

“Weadapted.” Varam refills our glasses. “We went deeper underground. Smaller knots. Less exposure. What they didn’t know, they couldn’t reveal. We preserved what we could. Gathered intelligence however we could. But once you had fallen, the usual routes became too dangerous. So we reverted—physical messengers, coded phrases, birds.” His voice roughens. “Slower.Riskier. We lost people we shouldn’t have.”

The weight of those losses are etched into his face, in the gray threading his once-dark hair, and in the additional scars that weren’t there when I knew him. Years of leading a broken rebellion, of making impossible decisions, and watching friends die while continuing the fight.

I watch him for a moment, then ask the question I already know the answer to.

“Why did you continue?”

He tips his glass toward me. “You know why,Nul’shar.”

His sister. A Tidevein. One of the first taken when the Authority was rising. She was six, just coming into her power. Varam ten. They neversaw her again.

From there, the movement grew. And Veinbloods, once revered and turned to in moments of need, became feared. They were driven out of villages, towns, cities that they once called home.

I shake my head, disrupting the memories, and focus on immediate concerns.

“Did Narina remain?”

“On the outskirts.” He hesitates, lashes dropping to hide his eyes. My shoulders tense, and I brace myself for the words I know he’s about to utter. “She was captured five years after Thornreave.” His voice drops. “She never broke. Never revealed any names. They executed her in the same spot they burned you.”

Another death on my conscience. Another price paid for my absence. Narina, with her quick mind and quicker tongue, who once challenged every plan I brought to the table until I couldn’t imagine forming one without her insight.

And with that thought, another rises. Two days before Thornreave, when we received word that Blackhollow had fallen.