Chapter 441: Urgency

Rhydian;

The hall looks the same way it did the first time they dragged us in here.

It has the same impossibly high ceiling still swallowed in darkness far above, the same massive stone pillars carved with symbols I still don’t recognise, the same pale blue flames burning inside their mounted bowls along the walls.

The invisible but undeniably heavy pressure of the room once again presses against my shoulders, and as much as I hate it, I keep my gaze on the floor. I listen to the flames crackle...to the witches and warlocks’ breathing.

I listen to the silence around us and the chaos in my mind.

The time is up. The time Avaren gave me to decide whether to sacrifice my father for the future of my people. Igma said nothing to me about the topic.

She’s been tending to Alana like she’s preparing to lose her. I can’t do that to Igma. I can’t imagine anyone taking Elián away from me forever.

I’d die from the pain. But giving up Father...I can’t do it. I hate that I’ve been put in this position. I can’t do this.

I feel stuck.

I keep replaying every version of these choices in my head, over and over, hoping one of them will finally feel less like betrayal. None of them do. Give up my father, and I spend the rest of my life knowing I traded him for peace I’m not even certain will hold. Refuse, and I watch a war unfold that Igma swears—and some cold, honest part of me agrees—we can’t win cleanly.

There’s no version where I walk out of this room and still recognise myself the same way I did walking in.

The same silent circle of witches and warlocks stay seated around the centre of the hall, watching us...the way one would watch the weather they’ve already decided they can’t control.

Avaren is once again sitting at the far end of the hall on that same dark, branch-backed throne—his blindfold secure across his eyes, and hands folded loosely in his lap like he’s been waiting here since the moment we left the room.

"You’ve had time," he says, the moment the doors close behind us. "I trust you’ve used it well."

Neither Igma, Alana, nor I respond.

I feel the question wash over the room and pierce through me quietly.

Wilhelm, or war?

...My father’s life laid bare on one side of a scale I never asked to be handed, and on the other, a fight neither of us fully believes we can win clean.

"We need more time," Igma finally says, and I can hear exactly how desperate she is for that. More time... Enough time for me to choose between her mate and my father.

Asking for more time is just as cruel as having no time left.

"You do not have more time," Avaren replies curtly. He didn’t shout, but he didn’t need to for us to know that reply was final.

"I gave you what I could spare. The offer does not improve with age. Neither does my patience." He adds, and I look up at him.

I stare at how confident and put together the blind wizard is, and once again, it infuriates me.

How can he act like he has no worries or fears in the world when handing this bowl of poison!?

Beside me, Alana shifts her weight, and I catch the small, involuntary way her hand finds Igma’s, fingers lacing together like she needs the anchor of it even now, weak as she still is. I hate that she has to sit through this too. I hate that any of us do.

Then...I remember something. I stare briefly at Alana, then at him.

"Alana told us something," I say out of the blue, and Igma’s head snaps in my direction while I hear Alana make a sound very close to a wince behind me.

Like she hadn’t expected me to bring that up. Neither of them did. But I need to buy us time.

"Something’s coming. Something even your own people are afraid of." I announce, and Avaren’s expression shifts behind his blindfold.

I see the small, involuntary tightening at the corner of his mouth as he lets out a breath.

"She was not meant to hear that," he says quietly, and I nod in nonchalant agreement.

"She heard it anyway," I reply as I take a step forward, and I feel Igma’s hand brush against my arm, a silent warning that I don’t heed.

"So don’t sit there and pretend this is only about my father. If something worse is coming for all of us, maybe the real question isn’t my father or war. Maybe it’s whether either of those things even matters once it arrives." I spit, and Avaren falls silent for just a second before responding.

"It matters," he says, and suddenly there’s an edge to his voice that wasn’t there a moment ago. An emotion I can not place.

"It matters more than you understand, Rhydian. Because the version of BeastHeaven that survives what’s coming is decided by the choice made in this room tonight. United, or fractured. Strengthened by allies, or standing alone against something even my own people fear to name aloud." He says, and I refuse to accept what he just said.

He will not put the fate of his people and the entirety of Beastheaven in my hands.

"That’s not an answer," I say. "That’s a threat wrapped in a warning." I spit.

"It is the truth," he replies dryly. "Whether you choose to hear it as one or the other is entirely yours to decide."

I want to argue further. I want to demand he simply say plainly what he means instead of dressing every warning up as philosophy, but something in the set of his jaw tells me he’s already given more than he intended to. Pushing harder will only close that door faster.

The silence that follows is as thick as wet cotton, and I feel Igma’s fear and worry radiating off her in waves she’s working very hard to keep off her face.

I look back at her and find that her spine is too straight, and her jaw has been set too firmly for someone who isn’t fighting to hold herself together.

I, however, can feel my own anger doing the opposite—not hidden at all anymore. It’s boiling far too close to the surface now, and my hands are curling into fists at my sides without my permission.

Every witch and warlock in this room is watching us the way they watched us the first time...patient, unreadable, like they already know how this ends and are simply waiting for us to catch up.

I hate that feeling most of all. Like whatever I say next has already been accounted for. Like there’s no version of my answer that surprises anyone seated in this hall except me.

"I need an answer," Avaren says, softer now, almost gentle. "Now. Wilhelm, or war. There is no third option left for me to offer you." He says, and I swallow.

I open my mouth, but I don’t know, even now, what’s about to come out of it. I still haven’t found the version of this choice I could live inside afterwards; I still haven’t decided which loss I could survive carrying for the rest of my life.

I think of my father’s hands on my shoulders the day I first shifted. I think of Igma’s face if I choose him over Alana. I think of thousands of people I’ve never met, whose lives apparently now rest on whatever comes out of my mouth in the next several seconds.

None of it resolves into an answer. It only tangles tighter.

Before a single word leaves me, the doors at the far end of the hall burst open.

Wood scrapes stubbornly against stone until it finally gives way all at once.

A female figure marches in, and the entire hall except for Avaren and us drops to its knees.

Every witch. Every warlock. All of them, in the same instant— heads bow, and knees strike the black stone floor in a single unbroken wave.

I don’t move. Neither does Igma nor Alana. We’re the only ones left standing in a room full of bent heads, and for a moment I don’t understand why, until I look back at the woman who’s marched in.

She has burgundy hair, deep and dark as dried blood; the locks fall loosely around her face. A face that holds grace even with the urgency it carries right now.

Her skin is a rich, warm brown, and where torchlight catches it, I see the faint shimmer of runes glowing directly under her flesh—old symbols, glowing faintly along her collarbone, down the backs of her hands, like the ones etched into the pillars around us.

Her impossible purple eyes frantically search the room till they land on Avaren.

Avaren rises. His whole posture softens the instant he turns towards her. Some of the weight he’s carried since the moment we met him eases off his shoulders, as he faces the doorway like nothing else in this hall matters anymore.

"Calisí?" he calls, and her name in his mouth carries something I haven’t heard from him once since we arrived. It’s not command, or patience. It’s relief, tangled up with something closer to fear.

She crosses the hall fast, stepping over and around the kneeling bodies without slowing. Her robes are catching against her legs, but she doesn’t stop until she’s close enough to the dais for me to see her hands are shaking.

Something in the air shifts the moment she stops in front of him—urgent, raw, entirely unlike the careful, measured atmosphere Avaren has maintained since the first moment Igma and I were dragged into this hall. Whatever she’s about to say, I understand instinctively that it matters more than anything currently sitting unresolved between the three of us and this blindfolded man on his throne.

I look at Igma. She looks back at me, and I watch the exact same thought pass behind her eyes at once.

Whatever we came here to decide, it has just stopped being the most urgent thing in this room.