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I stand, but I do not let go of Ghar’s hand until the last possible second. “You stay alive through treatment.”

“As you command.”

“I am serious.”

“So am I.”

A second medic directs me toward my own platform. I surrender because my body is beginning to make a compelling argument against further defiance. The scan starts above me in soft blue light, and the sterile smell of the med-bay presses down again.

Across the room, Sira watches the guards watching the shard case.

“You should rest,” she says.

I laugh weakly. “Sure. I will just rest while carrying the most dangerous partial truth in galactic history.”

Brakk turns his head on the pillow. “That’s the spirit. Healthy coping.”

Sira’s gaze remains steady. “Gradual truth is not betrayal, Anita. It is difficult stewardship.”

“Say stewardship enough times and I might start charging tuition.”

“You are frightened because the responsibility changed you.”

“Yes.”

“Good. Let it change you toward humility, not paralysis.”

I close my eyes for a second.

Humility. Restraint. Shared judgment. No thrones.

I can work with that. Maybe.

When I open my eyes, Ghar is still looking at me from the next platform while medics work over him. His face is tight with pain, but his gaze holds mine through it.

“You are not alone,” he says.

My throat aches.

The old me would make a joke. The new me still wants to, desperately, but the words that rise are softer and more honest.

“I know.”

He smiles faintly. “Good.”

Outside the med-bay viewport, the debris field that used to be Nareth-Kul drifts in cold silence, black stone and pale ice tumbling through the dark. Somewhere in that ruin, the full archive lies sealed beyond reach, waiting for better questions. Against my chest, the shard remains quiet under guard and skin and fear.

The galaxy does not know yet.

Not really.

Maybe it cannot know all at once.

Maybe that is mercy. Maybe it is cowardice. Maybe the difference will depend on what we build around the silence.

I turn my head toward Ghar as the scanner hums over me and the League vessel carries us away from the dead world.

Whatever happens next, I will not decide alone.