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He darts wide—trying to slip around me—aimed straight for her. Blade low, meant to gut her, weaken her, drag her back screaming. The Gospel knows exactly what she means to me. I see it in this man’s eyes. He’s not here to kill her fast. He’s here to carve a message into her body.

My blood goes cold and hot at the same time. I move—but she reaches him first.

Even with the limp, even with the pain that should slow her, she steps into the attack and not away from it. Her weight shifts brutally to her good leg, giving her swing all the force it needs.

Her arm arcs up. Not hesitant. Not desperate. Precise. Clean. Decisive.

The hatchet crushes through the hinge of his throat with a sickening crack, like she’s been waiting her whole life to make that strike.

Blood hits the ground in a steaming spray. He collapses.

She doesn’t recoil.

Doesn’t shake.

Doesn’t even blink.

Her limp steadies after the kill—as if the violence strengthened her instead of weakening her. She adjusts her stance—deliberately—like she’s correcting herself for next time.

The woods go dead around us, as if the trees themselves can feel a line shifting in the dirt. Even Shadow lowers himself to the earth, ears pinned, recognizing something primal and new. Somewhere deeper in the trees, a voice begins a prayer—and stops halfway through, like it forgot the words and the air itself rejected it.

I stare at her. Hard.

I should be alarmed. I should be grabbing her wrist, ripping the hatchet from her hand, telling her she crossed a line you don’t return from.

But her hand isn’t shaking. Her breath isn’t uneven. Her eyes—hell.

Her eyes look like mine did the first time I realized killing wasn’t something done to me anymore. It was something I could choose.

She looks…awake. Alive in a way innocence never allowed her to be.

And that—God help me—that hits something in me I thought was long dead.

She lifts her gaze to mine. Blood freckles her cheeks. Her chest rises slow. Controlled. No panic. No regret.

Her limp is there, yes—but she stands like someone rooted in the earth, unmovable.

I take a step toward her. I don’t mean to. My body just answers something it shouldn’t.

“Selah,” I say, my voice lower, rougher, darker than I intend. “That wasn’t survival.”

Her jaw tightens. “No.”

“Then what was it?”

She doesn’t break eye contact when her indigo eyes flash as she squares her chin. “A choice.”

The words hit me like a fist, and somewhere in my gut, something ugly clicks into place—not memory, but recognition.

Because choices were the first thing the Gospel carved out of me.

Because violence chosen, not forced, is the beginning of a very specific kind of path.

Because she should be horrified, fragile, folding under the weight of what she just did.

She isn’t. She stands firm in blood-soaked ground, steadier even through the ache in her leg, as if some locked door inside her just opened and she walked through without hesitation.

And instead of fear—I step closer.