Her name is Sera. That's the first lie we learn.
She's been in Verdwood for six months, a refugee fleeing a void-corrupted settlement. Or so she said. We took her in. Of course we did; refugees aren't rare. Miren even set her up in the healing house, and she was good at it. She was quiet, helpful, and eventually asked to train with the scouts, saying she wanted to learn to defend herself.
No one thought twice. You don't, when you're not looking for a knife in your back. You just see a new face.
Elder Stoneheart is the one who finds it, buried in the supply ledgers. He's meticulous, thank the spirits. He notices the numbers don't add up. Void dampeners, logged in but not on the shelf. Patrol routes, accessed by someone who had no business looking. It takes him three days of quiet, painstaking work to trace the spider's thread back to Sera.
When Dren brings her in, there's no fight. She doesn't run. She just sits. She waits in the holding cell under the council chambers with a stillness that makes my skin crawl.
Dren asks her what she was doing.
She looks at him, perfectly composed. "I was documenting your scout operations. Identifying coverage gaps. Noting dampener storage. Marking areas where the Hand could operate with minimal risk."
"You're a cult operative," Dren says. It's not a question.
"I am," she corrects, as if it's a simple fact. "Yes."
"Do you understand what you've done?" I ask, my voice shaking. "You've endangered scouts. You've compromised our defenses."
"I've helped the void reach its potential," she replies, her dark eyes completely steady. "I've helped humanity move toward evolution. From my perspective, I've been heroic."
Kaela wants her dead. Simple as that.
"She's a traitor," she grits out in the emergency council meeting. "She ate our food, trained with our people, and sold us out. There is only one punishment for that."
"Execution is tyranny," Lysara fires back, her face pale but set. "We kill her, we prove the cult's propaganda right. That we're afraid. That we destroy what we don't understand."
"This isn't about understanding!" Kaela slams her hand on the table. "This is about sabotage! She's not being executed for thinking, she's being executed for acting!"
"An act motivated by belief," Lysara insists. "If we execute her, we just make her a martyr."
"So what?" Kaela's voice is dangerously low. "We let her go? Give her a slap on the wrist?"
"I'm not suggesting we let her go," Lysara says. "I'm suggesting we examine whether execution is the answer, or just the easy one."
We go back that night. The three of us. Kaela stands right at the bars. "Why? You lived here. You trained with us. Why?"
Sera looks up, no fear at all. That's the worst part. "Because you're wrong. You're fighting the inevitable. The void isn't the enemy you believe it is."
"By getting people killed?" I burst out.
"By facilitating the evolution of humanity," she counters.
Lysara steps forward, her voice analytical. "You genuinely believe this. It's not manipulation. You actually believe void integration is beneficial."
"I know it is," Sera says with absolute certainty.
"How?"
For the first time, something in her composure shifts. She looks down at her own hands. "I have minor convergence marks. Faint ones, since I was a child. I thought they were a curse. The Hand... they showed me they were a gift. A sign of evolution. I couldn't ignore that truth once I understood it."
The bottom drops out of my stomach.
She's not some brainwashed fanatic. She's... like me. She's me, if Dren hadn't found me first.
"What would you do if we released you?" I ask carefully, my throat tight.
"Return to the cult," she says instantly. "Continue working toward their goals."
"Which would make you a permanent threat," Kaela points out.
"Yes," Sera acknowledges. "I would be. That's why execution makes sense from your perspective." She pauses, then looks right at Lysara. "Unless you believe I'm wrong. Unless you believe the void isn't evolution. Unless you believe you can convince me. Rehabilitation is possible, but it would require genuine engagement with my beliefs, not just imprisonment. It would require treating me as someone worth convincing, not someone worth destroying."
We bring this to the council. The chamber is thick with fear.
Ironwood lays it out: "Hostile agent. Act of war. Sabotage. Execution is the only deterrent."
Then Dren speaks, his voice quiet but cutting through the noise. "She is also convergence-marked. Like Ren. Like the children we've been searching for. The cult found her first. They offered her explanation and community. If we'd found her first, the outcome might have been completely different."
"She chose the cult," another member argues.
"She chose the only people who told her she wasn't a monster," Dren replies.
The debate rages. It's not about naivete; it's about precedent. We execute her, we execute someone like Ren. We let her live, and she might burn us all down.
The vote is agonizing. Five for rehabilitation. Four for execution. Two abstain.
Rehabilitation is approved, by a single vote. Under strict, strict conditions. Sera lives. For now.
Kaela is vibrating with rage as we walk through the village. "You just rewarded betrayal," she snarls. "You just showed every infiltrator that they can sabotage us and get community service. You just made us look weak."
"We made us look merciful," I counter.
"We made us look naive," she snaps.
But later, I find her in the training yard, just abusing a practice dummy. The wood is splintered. She's breathing hard, and when she finally stops, the anger has shifted.
"What if I'm wrong?" she asks quietly, not looking at me.
"Wrong about what?"
"About Sera. About execution. About everything." She sits down hard on the bench. "What if she's right and void integration is just evolution, and we're the ones fighting against inevitability?"
"Then at least we're fighting consciously," I say, settling beside her.
"That doesn't make me feel better," she says. "That makes me feel worse."
Lysara finds us there. She settles on Kaela's other side without asking, a silent bookend. "Rehabilitation is going to be hard," she says quietly. "Sera is intelligent. Her ideology is internally consistent. I'm going to struggle to counter it."
"So don't take it alone," Kaela says, looking at her. "Help us figure out how to answer her. Help us understand what we actually believe, versus what we're just repeating."
That night, on the roof, the three of us sit under the stars.
"We might be wrong," I say quietly. "About any of this."
"Yes," Lysara agrees. "We might be completely wrong. But we're choosing this path with our eyes open. And that matters."
"It doesn't matter if we're wrong," Kaela says slowly. "It only matters if we're lying to ourselves about believing it."
Below us, Verdwood settles into an uneasy sleep. Sera sits in supervised housing, probably thinking about philosophy and the three young people who just saved her life. We chose mercy over force. We chose dialogue over destruction.
And now we have to live with the consequences.