They released James and Miranda at dawn with official warnings and disappointed lectures about respecting Crown property.
"You're children," the officer said, signing release papers. "Stupid children who made stupid choices. But children nonetheless. Your tribunals are waived. Go home. Don't do anything this idiotic again."
James signed the forms and accepted his confiscated items before walking out into the cold morning air beside Miranda.
"I can't believe they just let us go," Miranda whispered.
"We're kids." James's voice was flat. "They probably think we learned our lesson."
They walked in silence until reaching the split where their paths diverged. Miranda hesitated, looking at James with concern he couldn't acknowledge.
"I'll come by later," she offered. "After you've had time to process—"
"Don't."
"James—"
"I said don't. Go home, Miranda. Your family has enough problems."
She thought about staying but she left. Because she was smart enough to recognize dismissal.
James walked home alone as the sun rose over Blüthaven, painting the sky in colors too beautiful for what this day would bring.
His house stood empty and looked abandoned.
James collapsed onto the couch and stared at nothing, waiting. They'd said his mother's tribunal was pending. His father was already convicted. Everything would proceed through proper legal channels.
He just had to wait.
The knock came at noon and James opened the door to find a territorial official, the same thin woman with spectacles who'd warned him about custody placement.
Her expression was carefully neutral. The look people wore when delivering terrible news they'd delivered too many times before.
"James Aldric?"
"Yes."
"May I come in?"
He stepped aside and she entered, taking in the house.
"I need to inform you of the tribunal outcomes regarding your parents." She pulled out official documents. "Your father, Grayson Aldric, was executed this morning at dawn. Charges: sedition against the Crown. Sentence: death by hanging."
The words didn't land at first. Just sounds. Syllables without meaning.
"Your mother, Eliza Aldric, was tried yesterday evening in emergency tribunal. Charges: conspiracy to commit sedition, attempted prisoner liberation, corruption of a minor. She was found guilty on all counts. Sentence: death by hanging. Executed at dawn, immediately following your father."
Now the words landed. Crashed through James like ice breaking.
Executed. Both of them.
"I'm very sorry," the official said, and maybe she meant it. "Their remains have been processed according to Crown protocol for convicted seditionists. No burial and ashes were scattered outside territorial bounds. As is standard—"
"Get out."
"I understand this is difficult, but I need to discuss your custody placement—"
"Get. Out."
The official's professional mask slipped slightly. "Mr. Aldric, you're a minor. The law requires—"
"I know what the law requires. You have forty-eight hours to arrange a placement. That's the regulation." James's voice was dead. "You still have forty-seven hours. Come back then."
"Mr. Aldric—"
"GET OUT!"
The telepathic force behind those words sent the official stumbling backward. She caught herself, eyes wide with something that might have been fear or recognition.
But she left, pulling the door closed behind her.
James stood in his living room, holding official documents that declared his parents dead, and felt something inside him shatter into pieces too small to ever reassemble properly.
His father was dead. His mother was dead.
Executed as a way to send a message to anyone else who was feeling brave enough to speak out.
Executed for refusing to accept persecution. Ashes scattered like garbage because even in death, the Crown denied them dignity.
The sound that came from James wasn't human. Just raw grief given voice, tearing through his lips.
He collapsed, hands clawing at the floor, plants responding to his anguish by growing wild, filling the room with green chaos even worse than before.
They were dead. Dead. The word repeated in his mind like a mantra, like a curse, like the only truth left in the world.
Victor Morningstar had watched his mother die and then died himself.
James Aldric had tried to be different, tried to be strong, tried to be prepared. And his parents were still dead.
All his power, all his knowledge, all his careful planning... useless.
He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Could only feel the crushing weight of loss and failure and grief so complete it felt like drowning.
The knock at his door came softer this time. Miranda's voice: "James? I heard. I'm so sorry. Can I come in?"
He should send her away. Should protect her from this, from him, from the wreckage he was becoming.
Instead, he opened the door.
Miranda took one look at his face and stepped inside, arms opening to—
"Stop."
The word stopped her mid-step.
"They're dead, Miranda. Both dead. Executed. This morning. While I was being released with a warning for trespassing."
"James, I—"
"While I was walking home, they were dying. While I was sitting here waiting for news, they were already ashes." His laugh sounded broken. "I went to see my mother. Told her I'd survive. Told her I'd come back. And she was dead twelve hours later."
—he's breaking, I don't know how to help—
"You can't help." James's eyes were empty, seeing something beyond her. "No one can help. They're dead because they loved me. My existence got them killed."
"That's not true—"
"ISN'T IT?" The telepathic force of the words made Miranda stumble back. The temperature in the room plummeted as ice spread across surfaces. Plants grew wild, vines shooting up walls with violent speed. "I was born with magic I shouldn't have! Became something impossible! And they died because they were associated with me!"
"James, stop—"
"They executed my parents, Miranda." His voice dropped to something cold and dead. "The tribunal, the case, it was all a joke. They never intended to let them live. This was their way of crushing any future rebellion..."
He moved toward her and she backed away, eyes wide with something that looked like fear.
"I won't let you die too. Won't let anyone else pay for what I am." James's hands clenched, ice spreading from his fingertips. "So leave. Forget you knew me. Live your life away from this..." He gestured at himself, at the chaos around him, "...this curse."
"I won't abandon you—"
"YOU WILL!" The words came as a force, temperature dropping and raw magical power leaking through shattered control all at once. "You'll leave now and you won't come back."
Miranda's eyes filled with tears. "James, please—"
"Go."
The single word carried such cold finality that Miranda actually flinched. She stood there for one more moment, tears streaming down her face, then turned and ran.
And the door slammed behind her with a telekinetic push.
James stood alone in his overgrown house, surrounded by plants that had responded to his grief by consuming everything, and felt Victor Morningstar merge completely with James Aldric.
Two lives. Same lesson.
Love was weakness. Attachment was vulnerability. Everyone you cared about eventually became a weapon someone else used to destroy you.
He moved to his desk, pulled out his journal, the careful documentation of his life, his plans, his hopes.
He tried to write. Tried to document as a way to process, but his hand wouldn't move or form words.
Because what words existed for this? What analysis could capture this knowledge?
James ripped the page. Then another. Then another.
Tore apart months of careful notes, years of planning, every word he'd written about building a future that now didn't exist.
The journal came apart in his hands, pages scattered like his life, like his family, like everything that mattered.
He wanted to scream but no sound came. Just silent rage and grief tearing through him while plants grew wild around him and ice spread across every surface as the temperature dropped until his breath formed clouds.
The Soul Splitter sat in its planter, hidden among roots. The device he'd built to control his destiny. He pulled it free and held it in his hands.
James looked at the device, at the representation of everything he'd worked for, and felt nothing.
No pride. No satisfaction. No sense of accomplishment.
Just hollow emptiness where purpose used to live.
A sound from the corner made him look up. The large planter he'd kept the Soul Splitter in, the one he'd grown specifically to be dense and concealing.
It was moving.
James watched as vines formed into something like limbs. As leaves arranged into something like a face. As the entire plant pulled itself from the soil and stood on root-legs, staring at him with an expression that was unmistakably judgmental.
"Well," the plant said, voice like rustling leaves and surprising eloquence, "fuck."
James stared. "Did you just—"
"Talk? Yeah. Apparently you dumped so much emotional magical bullshit into me over the past few months that I achieved sentience." The plant crossed vine-arms. "So congratulations. Your grief is so potent it brings vegetables to life. That's a new low."
"I'm hallucinating."
"You're not hallucinating, genius. You're just such a powerful Nature mage that you accidentally created consciousness in a houseplant." The plant moved closer, roots making soft sounds on the floor. "And now I'm stuck here, aware and articulate, forced to watch you have a breakdown."
James couldn't process this, or rather refused to.
"Your parents are dead," the plant said with a gentler voice now. "That's fucked. Really fucked. And you're allowed to be destroyed by that. But kid, you need to survive the next forty-eight hours or you're going to end up in Crown custody and everything they died for becomes meaningless."
"Nothing means anything."
"Bullshit. Everything means everything and that's the problem." The plant gestured with a vine. "You think your parents died for nothing? They died believing you'd survive and grow and become whatever the hell you're supposed to become. You going to waste that?"
James looked at the plant, at the impossible thing he'd apparently created through accidental magical saturation.
"I don't know what I'm supposed to become."
"Then figure it out. But do it somewhere that isn't this house, because in..." the plant paused, as if counting, "...forty-six hours, they're coming to take you. And I assume that's not part of your master plan."
It wasn't. James had no plan. Hadn't thought past the grief, past the loss, past the terrible knowledge that everyone he loved was dead.
But the plant was right. Staying here meant custody. Meant government control and everything his parents had tried to prevent.
"I need to leave," James said slowly.
"Yeah, no shit. Pack light. Move fast. Don't look back." The plant moved toward the door. "And take me with you, because apparently I'm alive now and I'd prefer not to die of neglect while you're off having your tragic protagonist journey."
James would have laughed if he remembered how. Instead, he just moved with haste, gathering essentials. The Soul Splitter. Some clothes. Money from his parents stash.
The plant, his plant, watched with what might have been approval.
"What do I call you?" James asked.
"Frank."
"That's not a plant name."
"The fuck do I care? Frank is the least weird thing about this situation." The plant, Frank, moved to the door. "Now let's get moving before the government shows up to turn you into a statistic."
James took one last look at his house. At the place he'd grown up. At the rooms where his parents had lived, loved and tried to protect him.
At the place where they weren't anymore.
Then he walked out, Soul Splitter in a bag, Frank following on root-legs, leaving behind everything except grief and rage.
The door closed behind him and he didn't look back.
Because looking back meant seeing what he'd lost.
And moving forward meant becoming something that could never lose again.
Even if that something was monstrous.
Especially if that something was monstrous.