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The High Revelation’s hand doesn’t fall. It lingers there, close enough to make Cass go still, and then he laughs once under his breath, not cruelly, not loudly, but with the quiet patience of a man watching children misunderstand a sermon.

“Oh.” His voice carries the patience of a man correcting a child. “No.”

The word lands wrong. Sideways. Rotten.

“A trade,” he continues, circling us now, boots crunching slow and deliberate, “implies mercy. Choice. Balance.”

He stops in front of me.

“You were never here to be exchanged.”

Cass’s breath fractures. “You said⁠—”

“I said what was needed.” His smile barely moves. “Hope brings people to doors they know better than to open.”

Cass lifts her head. Chains pull tight across her shoulders. She doesn’t flinch.

“You don’t get to decide what she becomes,” Cass says, voice torn raw and still mean enough to cut. “And you don’t get to turn my sister into a story you survive.”

The air in the chamber shifts. Not anger. Calculation.

That’s when I know.

I don’t look at Cass. If I do, I won’t finish this.

“When she comes,” I say, voice level, stripped down to function, “tell her I was wrong.”

Silence.

“Tell her the world doesn’t return what it takes,” I continue. “It only teaches you how long you can keep reaching for it.”

The High Revelation finally turns to me.

“No.”

Not we won’t. Not we can’t. Just no, like the word is a door closing.

“This was never a trade,” he says. “You were an offering. She is the consequence.”

Cass exhales a laugh.

It’s short. Bitter. Bright with teeth.

“Then listen carefully,” she says. “Because when she comes⁠—”

The High Revelation lifts one finger. A single motion.

The chain winch engages. Cass is pulled backward, wrists dragged high above her head.

Metal screams.

The sound tears through the chamber—iron dragging iron, a shriek that crawls into bone and doesn’t let go.

I don’t turn because I don’t have to.

The sound tells me enough.

Behind us, Marrow Ridge keeps singing, not in triumph, not in prayer, but with the hungry patience of something waiting for the first bone to give.