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Lucas assesses us in one look. Good. Someone here can still think clearly.

Hands replace hers at my ribs—firm, practiced, impersonal. I let go because I understand leverage. Because fighting would cost energy I no longer have. Because staying would mean becoming a symbol again.

They lift me.

My feet leave the floor.

That shouldn’t matter.

It does.

Selah is still there when they move me, standing amid smoke and falling scripture like the world finally decided where ruin belonged and placed her in the middle of it.

My vision blurs at the edges. Sound drops out, then rushes back too loud—the crack of beams, the cough of fire, someone shouting my name like it matters. Black Harvest’s hands tighten at my ribs when my weight shifts wrong. I don’t feel my feet. I feel her.

Our eyes meet once.

She doesn’t tell me to stay, and she doesn’t tell me to go. She doesn’t give me forgiveness, doesn’t give me anger, doesn’t give me the mercy of making this simple.

She just looks at me.

Steady. Unreadable. Alive.

That is worse than anything she could have said, because I know what it costs her not to reach for me.

I know what it costs me not to ask.

My mouth fills with copper when I try to breathe through it. For one second, I think I say her name. I don’t know if any sound makes it out.

Then they carry me through the smoke, and I don’t look back.

Outside, the night is alive with flame.

Trailers burn unevenly, fire climbing welded seams like it finally understands where to go. Smoke coils into the sky thick enough to choke out scripture mid-verse. Somewhere behind us, something gives—not dramatic, not cinematic, just structural and final.

Black Harvest gets me into the back of a reinforced flatbed, hands under my arms and at my ribs, careful in the way people are with things that might still come apart.

Metal grinds against metal as the door slams shut, and the sound rings inside my ribs.

I lie there shaking—not from fear, not from cold, but from restraint tearing loose all at once. My hands curl once, then still.

I’m alive.

That’s not the same as free.

The engine turns over.

Movement begins.

Through the open door, I see Selah standing in the firelight with Cass beside her, upright by force or spite or whatever Crow women have instead of mercy for themselves. The compound folds inward behind them, belief collapsing into smoke and heat and consequence.

Lucas leans in once before the door closes, smoke curling around his shoulders. His eyes cut to mine, sharp enough to keep me conscious.

“The Ridge burned.” His mouth barely moves. “The Gospel didn’t.”

I nod because that’s all I have left.

The door shuts.