The Order did not come for me immediately.
That alone told me everything.
They were patient when they needed to be. Careful. Calculating. Violence was their last step, not their first. They believed control lasted longer when it felt voluntary.
I had been taught that lesson myself.
The days after the forest incident passed in a strange quiet. No pursuit. No signal flares. No messengers demanding explanation. Just absence—the kind that doesn't feel like peace, but preparation.
I moved constantly. Not out of fear, but habit. Paths changed. Camps abandoned before dawn. The kind of movement drilled into me long ago, when standing still was punished and predictability was a sin.
Still, nothing happened.
By the fifth day, I understood their strategy.
They were waiting for me to return.
I had always returned before.
The Order did not see themselves as something I could leave behind. They saw themselves as gravity—inevitable, unseen, absolute. Tools wandered sometimes. Weapons misplaced themselves. But in the end, everything fell back into place.
I had been designed that way.
That thought unsettled me more than pursuit ever could.
I was sharpening my spear when the memories began to surface—uninvited, persistent.
The training halls. The stone floors etched with diagrams explaining how to end lives efficiently. The way mistakes were corrected immediately, sometimes painfully, never gently. The words repeated until they became truth.
You exist to prevent worse outcomes.What you are doesn't matter—what you stop does.
I had believed them.
Not because they were kind, but because they were consistent.
The messenger arrived on the sixth day.
He did not wear the Order's colors. He wore plain travel clothes, carefully chosen to appear harmless. Someone else might have lowered their guard at the sight.
I did not.
He stopped at the edge of my camp, palms visible. Respectful. Afraid.
"Arlott," he said.
Hearing my name spoken without command attached to it felt… strange.
"You shouldn't be here," I replied.
"No," he agreed. "But they thought you might listen to me."
I said nothing.
He took my silence as permission and continued.
"The Order is concerned," he said carefully. "Your last engagement deviated from established protocol."
"You mean I didn't kill him."
He flinched. Just slightly.
"Yes."
I stood slowly, spear in hand but lowered. "That's the concern?"
"It's the implication," he said. "You chose uncertainty over finality."
I laughed softly. The sound surprised both of us.
"You taught me to eliminate threats," I said. "That man wasn't one."
"He could become one."
"So could I," I replied. "Did that ever stop you?"
His throat worked. "You're different."
"Say it," I pressed. "Say what you mean."
He hesitated, then forced the words out. "You're controlled."
The word landed between us like a blade.
"I was," I corrected.
Silence stretched.
"The Order wants reassurance," he said finally. "A statement. A gesture. Something that proves this was an anomaly."
"And if I don't?"
"Then they'll classify you as unstable."
I tilted my head. "Is that your word?"
"No," he admitted. "It's theirs."
"What happens to unstable weapons?" I asked.
He didn't answer.
I already knew.
"They taught me what happens," I continued. "They taught me how to do it."
The messenger looked at me differently then—not as a tool, not as a threat, but as a man standing at the edge of something irreversible.
"You don't have to do this," he said quietly.
I met his gaze. "Neither do they."
He left shortly after.
I watched him ride away until the landscape swallowed him whole. When he was gone, the camp felt too open. Too exposed. As if the world itself was aware that something had shifted.
That night, the thing inside me did not sleep.
It felt the tension. The imminent violence. Not with excitement—but recognition.
This was familiar territory.
Just from the other side.
The hunters came two days later.
Five of them this time. Chosen carefully. Not the strongest. Not the most eager. The ones who knew me. Who had sparred with me, trained with me, shared silent meals after exercises that left bodies bruised and spirits hollow.
They did not announce themselves.
They didn't need to.
I stepped into the clearing before they could surround it.
Their leader raised a hand—not in greeting, but restraint.
"Stand down," he said. "This isn't a fight."
"It never is," I replied.
"We're not here to kill you."
"Not yet."
He grimaced. "You're forcing their hand."
"No," I said calmly. "I'm removing it."
They attacked anyway.
I did not draw on the thing inside me at first. I wanted to know—needed to know—how much of me was still just skill, just muscle memory, just human ability honed to its edge.
Enough, it turned out.
Enough to break formation. Enough to disarm without blood. Enough to leave three of them on the ground, gasping, alive.
The fourth cut deeper than I intended. The fifth tried to run.
Fear ruins training.
I caught him easily.
He dropped to his knees, weapon forgotten. "Please," he whispered.
I stood there, staring down at him. This was the moment they had prepared me for. This exact angle. This exact vulnerability.
End it.
I didn't.
I stepped back.
"Go," I said.
He didn't hesitate.
When it was over, I was alone again, surrounded by the evidence of my choice.
The Order's response came at sunset.
Not soldiers.
Not hunters.
A proclamation.
I felt it in the air, in the subtle shift of intent in the world around me.
Arlott, designated asset, is hereby declared compromised.
All prior protections revoked.
Containment authorized.
I let out a slow breath.
So that was it.
No ceremony. No trial. No conversation.
Just a word.
Compromised.
As if I were a mechanism that had begun to misfire.
I looked out across the land as night crept in, the horizon burning briefly before fading to black. Somewhere out there, plans were already being made. Paths drawn. Lives redirected.
All because I chose not to kill a man.
The spear felt heavier in my hands.
Not because of doubt.
Because of responsibility.
If this was the cost of choice, then I would pay it consciously. Not as a weapon afraid of breaking—but as a man willing to be broken if that was what it took to remain his own.
I turned away from the camp and walked into the dark.
The Order would follow.
Let them.