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The words cut through the chamber louder than the explosions.

Rolaev turns sharply. Even she looks startled.

Anita’s hands burn silver where archive residue clings to her skin. She pushes at the slab with no realistic chance of moving it, tears streaking through the dust on her face, her jaw clenched so hard I can hear her teeth grind.

“I don’t care,” she says again, voice breaking as she looks at me. “Not more than him. Not more than this. Not more than his life.”

My hearts stop their violent rhythm for a single impossible instant.

She values me more than the knowledge.

The realization does not arrive as triumph. It arrives as grief, awe, and responsibility so heavy that even the slab across my back feels lesser beside it. Anita, who has chased truth through every danger, who has been willing to tear open history with bloody hands, who once treated vulnerability like a trapdoor under her feet, has just abandoned the active archive because I am pinned beneath collapsing stone.

Not because destiny requires it.

Because she loves me.

I push again.

This time, the strength comes from somewhere deeper than pain. Brakk’s cable line snaps taut around the slab. Sira throws a stabilizing pulse beneath its edge. Anita shoves with everything her human body can give, which is not enough by itself and still somehow matters more than physics.

The slab lifts a handspan.

I roll.

It crashes down where my spine was, shaking the terrace hard enough to crack the floor in a jagged line beneath us. Anita throws herself over me as fragments rain across my armor. I curl an arm around her and twist, shielding her body with mine while dust and hot sparks lash my back.

Anita hits my chest with both hands. “Do not do that again!”

I cough blood onto the stone. “I will attempt to be more selective about falling architecture.”

“That is not funny.”

“No.”

Her hands hover over my face, my shoulder, my ribs, as if she cannot decide where I am most injured and therefore must worry everywhere at once. Her eyes are wild. “Can you stand?”

“Yes.”

“That sounded like a lie wearing boots.”

“It is wearing armor.”

“Ghar.”

I force myself upright. The chamber tilts. Pain roars along my back and chest, but my legs hold. Barely. Anita presses against my side, trying to support a body more than twice her mass with pure stubbornness.

“You left the interface,” I say.

“I noticed.”

“The archive⁠—”

“I chose you.”

The words leave no room for argument.

Another blast strikes the breach. Choir soldiers surge forward under cover of smoke, and I turn with a snarl, weapon rising. Pain makes my aim a little slower. Not enough for mercy.