"Power doesn't reveal who you are. It reveals who you serve, and whether you ever had a choice."
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Kael had become something she didn't recognize.
Near the back of the room, she spotted Aldric, a tenant farmer who had always spoken favorably of Tarkun's direct methods of governance. His weathered face was skeptical as he listened to the revolutionary fervor building around him.
"I still say Lord Tarkun is the better choice," Aldric said, raising his voice above the murmur. "He's strong enough to bring order to this chaos. Maybe some of his methods are harsh, but harsh times need harsh leaders."
The words were like oil thrown on fire. Kael whirled toward the older man, his face twisting with sudden rage. "Order? You call murder and torture 'order'? You call living in fear 'peace'?"
"I call survival what it is, boy," Aldric replied, not backing down despite being thirty years older and half Kael's size. "Your revolution will get everyone killed, including your own mother. At least under Tarkun, some of us might live."
For a heartbeat, Nisheena thought Kael might listen to reason. The mention of his mother seemed to give him pause, his certainty wavering slightly. But then his jaw set with determination, and she knew the moment had passed.
Kael's fist caught Aldric across the jaw with a wet crack that echoed through the suddenly silent room. The older man went down hard, blood spattering across the wooden floor as his head struck a table edge. He lay there dazed, one hand pressed to his split lip.
"Anyone else think we should bow to murderers and tyrants?" Kael demanded, placing one boot on Aldric's chest and raising his fist high. "Or are you ready to fight for something better?"
The response was immediate and overwhelming. Voices rose in a roar of approval, fists pumped in the air, and suddenly the room was filled with the electric energy of mob violence barely held in check. Men who had been neighbors and friends moments before were now united in bloodlust, ready to follow this farm boy into battle against impossible odds.
"Death to the families!" someone shouted.
"Freedom for Baelur!" came another cry.
"Kael! Kael! Kael!" The chant built in volume until it seemed to shake the very timbers of the inn.
Nisheena stood frozen behind her bar, watching in horror as everything she had tried to prevent came to pass. The boy she had hoped might help save the town was instead leading it to destruction, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Kael basked in the adoration like a plant soaking up sunlight. This was what he had been born for, she realized, not farming, not the quiet life of rural respectability, but this moment of pure leadership, of absolute conviction in the face of overwhelming odds.
"Go home!" he commanded, his voice carrying easily over the crowd. "Find whatever weapons you can, swords, axes, pitchforks, anything with an edge. Bring whatever armor you can scrape together. We meet back here at full dawn, and then we take our town back!"
The crowd began to disperse with purposeful energy, men and women streaming out into the pre-dawn darkness with murder in their hearts and hope in their voices. Within minutes, the inn was nearly empty, leaving only Nisheena, Kael, and the groaning form of Aldric still sprawled on the floor.
She walked around the bar toward him, her movements deliberate and controlled despite the rage building inside her. "What do you think you're doing?" she asked quietly.
"What needs to be done" Kael replied, not meeting her eyes as he flexed his bruised knuckles.
"Someone has to lead them. Someone has to give them hope."
"This isn't hope," Nisheena said, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. "This is suicide dressed up in pretty words. You're going to get them all killed."
"Maybe," Kael admitted with frightening calm. "But at least they'll die free."
"Free?" She laughed bitterly. "You don't know what that word means. You're seventeen years old, boy. You've never seen real war, real violence, real death. This isn't some heroic ballad, it's butchery waiting to happen."
Now Kael did look at her, and she was chilled by what she saw in his eyes. Not the hot anger of youth, but something colder and more dangerous, absolute certainty in his own righteousness.
"You wouldn't understand," he said dismissively. "This is men's business. A dark elf shouldn't interfere with human affairs."
The words hit her like a slap across the face. Not just because of their casual racism, but because of what they represented, the final severing of bonds that had taken decades to build. The boy who had once looked up to her as a surrogate aunt was now dismissing her as an outsider whose opinions didn't matter.