The night your parents died, the official telegram said only:
"Killed in action during classified joint exercise. Mechanical failure. No remains recovered."
Your grandmother read it once, folded it into a perfect square, and burned it in the kitchen sink without a word.
Your grandfather simply locked his study door for three days. When he came out his eyes were red but his voice was steel.
That was when he told the twelve of you (you, your sisters, your cousins, second cousins, all the Rourke children under twenty) the truth:
The Empire has been pruning the Rourke line for two generations.
Too many stars on too many collars.
Too many soldiers who would follow a Rourke into hell and come back singing.
Too much loyalty that didn't belong to the Emperor first.
Your parents weren't the first "training accident."
They won't be the last, unless the rest of you disappear.
Grandfather's plan was simple and terrible:
He and Grandmother would stay behind, make noise, draw every watcher, every assassin, every drone.
They would die loud and public so the Empire believed the Rourke threat died with them.
The younger generation would scatter like seeds on the wind.
On the last night, in the old underground shooting range beneath Generals' Row, he lined all of you up like you were still cadets.
He looked oldest you'd ever seen him, but his back was still ramrod straight.
"Some of you want blood," he said. "I understand. I've wanted it for forty years.
But vengeance is a fire that burns the hand holding the match.
Live long. Live quiet. Live free.
That is the only defeat the Empire cannot forgive."
Then he hugged each of you once, hard, the way he did when you were small enough to lift.
Grandmother kissed every forehead and slipped a tiny data chip into each of your hands (coordinates, identities, money, the last honest map of the Empire's black sites).
You never saw them again.
Two weeks later the newsfeeds showed their mansion in flames.
"Gas explosion."
Another tragic accident."
You ran.
The twelve of you crossed three provinces in the back of vegetable trucks, fishing boats, freight trains.
When you finally stopped, exhausted and hollow, in a misty mountain valley no map bothered to name, the argument started immediately.
Cousin Dax, seventeen and already built like a main battle tank, slammed his fist into a tree.
"They murdered our parents! We have the training, the names, the proof! We hit back now!"
Rory, your fierce little sister, eyes blazing, nodded.
Cassie, quieter, just stared at the ground, knuckles white around the data chip Grandmother gave her.
But you, you felt something colder settle in your gut.
You thought of Grandfather's last words.
You thought of the long line of Rourkes who died with honor and still ended up ash.
You spoke first.
"If we fight, we die loud and fast, and the Empire wins twice.
They want martyrs. They want legends they can point to and say 'See? We had to kill them.'
The only way we beat them is by refusing to give them another grave to parade."
Half the group called you a coward.
Dax spat at your feet and left with five others before dawn, vanished into the night with rifles and rage.
The rest (you, Rory, Cassie, four cousins, and little Eli who was only nine) stayed.
You changed your names.
You burned your uniforms.
You learned to farm terraced rice, to speak the mountain dialect without the crisp military edge, to smile without saluting.
Years pass like quiet seasons.
You marry a soft-spoken schoolteacher from the next valley who never asks why you wake up reaching for a sidearm that isn't there.
Rory becomes the village midwife, delivering babies with the same steady hands that once held a sniper rifle.
Cassie teaches children to read under the same tree where you once argued about revenge.
Some nights the data chip feels heavy in the box under the floorboards.
Some mornings you still taste smoke that isn't there.
But the Empire never comes.
You grow old watching your own children, then grandchildren, run barefoot in the mud, chasing chickens, learning to read by lamplight, never once having to practice dropping prone when a helicopter passes overhead.
One spring evening, seventy years almost to the day you ran, you sit on the porch with Rory and Cassie. All of you grey now, backs bent, hands scarred from rice sickles instead of rifle grips.
A letter arrives, rare as snow in summer, carried by a trader who doesn't know what he's holding.
Inside: a single photograph.
It's Dax, older, scarred, one eye missing, standing in front of a burning government building somewhere far away. On the back, in his handwriting, shaky but proud:
"We made them bleed.
But they're still standing.
You were right.
I'm sorry.
Tell the kids I tried."
You burn the photo in the cook-fire that night.
Rory cries once, quietly.
Cassie just stares into the flames like she's reading tomorrow in them.
You pour three cups of rice wine and toast the dark.
"To the ones who fought," you say.
"To the ones who didn't," Rory answers.
"To the ones who lived long enough to choose," Cassie finishes.
You drink.
The mountains keep their silence.
The Empire grows old and forgets the name Rourke ever scared them.
And somewhere under starlight, twelve seeds that refused to become martyrs keep blooming, quiet and stubborn and free.
You die at ninety-three, in your sleep, Rory holding one hand, Cassie the other.
Your gravestone is simple, hand-carved, no rank, no medals:
Here lies a Rourke
Who chose tomorrow over vengeance
And won.
The wind takes the words,
but the rice keeps growing.