The grey light came through the high windows and Neo watched it move across the stone floor.
Tar's shoulder was still pressed against his. The big minotaur hadn't moved in hours. His breathing was slow and deep, his eye half-closed, his hand resting on his knee. The bandages on his other shoulder were stained through.
Alinda stood a few feet away, her back against a pillar. Every few minutes her eyes cut toward the chapel where Thal stood — the broad back, the dried blood, the stillness — and then away again.
Luken was awake now. Neo had seen it from across the hall. The small movement of his head turning. Valen leaning forward. Nyra shifting on her stool. The three of them talking in low voices, their words too quiet to make out. Neo had looked once — just long enough to see Luken's hand move to his stomach — and then he'd looked away.
He stayed on the bench. Tar's shoulder was warm against his.
Outside, the city was waking up. Voices at first just a few, scattered and distant. Footsteps on cobblestones. The creak of cart wheels. And underneath it, threading through the noise, the words he'd been hearing all night. Kruul. The undercity. It has to be them.
His hand was resting on the bench. He didn't move it.
More voices now. Louder. A woman shouting. A man answering her, his tone sharp. The crowd was gathering somewhere beyond the cathedral doors, their words bleeding through the stone.
Neo stood up.
Alinda looked at him. "Where are you going?"
"Air."
She didn't stop him. She just watched him go the way she'd watched Thal go — with the same quiet, unreadable expression, the same refusal to ask the question she already knew the answer to.
He walked past the benches, past the wounded, past Nyra and Valen and Luken without looking at them. The grey light from the entrance was brighter now, pale and cold. He stepped through the doors and the morning air hit his face.
The noise of the crowd was louder out here. He walked down the cathedral steps and kept walking — past the barricades, past the guards who didn't look at him twice, past the people who were streaming in from the outer districts with fear in their eyes and accusations on their tongues. He didn't have a destination. He just needed to move. He just needed to not be in that room, listening to people call for the death of the Kruul.
The streets opened around him. The bodies from last night had been moved — pulled to the sides, covered with cloth, waiting for someone to claim them. The blood had dried on the cobblestones. The smell was still there, iron and ash and something sweeter underneath. He walked until the cathedral was behind him and the crowd was in front of him and then he stopped because there was nowhere else to go.
The people were everywhere. Pressed together in the square, spilling out from the side streets, their faces pale with exhaustion and fear and something harder. Some were carrying children. Some were carrying weapons. Some were just standing there, their hands empty, their eyes hollow, waiting for someone to tell them what to do.
A woman near the front was weeping. Her dress was torn. Her hands were bloody. She kept saying a name over and over, a name that no one was answering.
An old man beside her put his hand on her shoulder. "It was the Kruul. The undercity. It had to be them. Who else could do this?"
Neo stood at the edge of the crowd and didn't move.
"...been hiding down there for years..."
"...my brother saw them, he said they were breeding..."
"...the Church needs to do something, they can't just let this happen..."
The words washed over him. A guard near the barricade shouted something about patrols and the undercity and rooting them out. Someone in the crowd cheered.
Then the cathedral doors opened behind him.
Not the small movement of a healer slipping through — the full, formal opening of the great doors. The crowd stirred. A figure in Church robes stepped out, flanked by guards in the armour of the Three. An older man, his hair grey, his face lined with the particular weariness of someone who had been awake all night and was not finished yet. He raised his hands and the crowd fell silent.
"People of Lions Gate," he said. "The Church has heard your questions. We will answer them."
Neo stood in the middle of the crowd. The bodies pressed against him. The morning light was pale and cold.
"There are rumours spreading about the Hero of Will. About what you may have seen as he was brought to this cathedral last night. The Church does not deny what you saw. But we will not allow ignorance to turn a hero into a target."
The weeping woman had stopped crying. The old man's hand was still on her shoulder.
"The Hero of Will is not what some of you may believe. He is not Kruul. What was done to him was done by Kruul hands, without his consent, when he was a student at the Academy. He was taken. He was experimented upon. He carries the marks of what was done to him, but he does not carry their blood. He is a victim of the enemy we face — not a representative of them."
Neo's hands were at his sides.
"The Church has known of his condition since he was chosen by the Three. We have never doubted his humanity, his service, or his place among the Heroes of this city. To question him is to question the wisdom of the Three themselves."
The crowd erupted. Someone near the front shouted Luken's name — not as a question, but as a rallying cry. Someone else took it up, and then another, and then the whole crowd was chanting his name like a weapon.
Neo turned. Not toward the cathedral. Away from it. The chanting followed him, fading as he pushed through the bodies and walked. He didn't know where he was going. He just needed to not be there. He just needed to not hear it anymore.
The streets opened around him. The chanting faded behind the walls. He walked past the covered bodies and the dried blood and the barricades that had held the line all night. His feet carried him through alleys he didn't recognize. The morning light was pale and cold and he kept walking until he couldn't hear the crowd anymore, until the only sound was his own footsteps on the stone.
He stopped in front of a collapsed building. The shopfront was caved in, the sign unreadable. A child's shoe lay in the rubble.
He stood there for a long time.
His hand went to his face. To the place where the illusion sat, where the horns were hidden, where the black sclera and violet iris were buried under Alinda's magic. He pressed his fingers against the smooth skin and felt nothing.
Underneath, the horns were still there. The eyes were still there. Everything he was, still there, waiting.
Footsteps behind him. Heavy. Familiar.
Thal stopped a few feet away. Bare-chested, the dried blood still on his forearms. He didn't speak. He just stood there in the quiet of the ruined street.
Neo didn't turn around. "They used him. Used what was done to him. And no one even blinked."
Thal said nothing.
"Luken's one of them. Human. A hero. So they protect him." His voice was flat. "But the rest of us — the ones in the undercity — we're not. We don't get speeches. We get burned out."
Silence.
"How did it get to this."
Thal didn't answer. Neo hadn't expected him to.
"I've been hiding my whole life. You taught me to. Keep my head down. Don't give them a reason." He turned. "Why."
Thal looked at him. The golden eyes were steady. "Because I wanted you to live."
"That's it."
"Yes."
Neo stared at him. "I'm Kruul. I'm going to die eventually. You know that. I'm going to die and you're going to keep standing there and none of this will matter. So why does it matter if I live a few more years?"
Thal was quiet for a long moment. "Because you're still here. Because I can still see you." He paused. "Because the alternative was worse."
Neo looked away. "Now I get why you kept me hidden."
Thal didn't answer. The silence stretched, and then he spoke again, his voice low.
"You sound like her sometimes. Quincy."
Neo's jaw tightened.
Thal looked at the collapsed building. "She believed the same thing. Life is life. She died for it." He paused. "I see her in you. That's why."
He was quiet for a moment. Then his hand came to rest on Neo's shoulder. Not heavy. Just there.
Neo didn't speak. His hand was still at his side. The horns were still under his skin.
They stood together in the quiet of the ruined street and watched the morning come.