Ten years had passed, and Blue was about to turn eighteen—the age at which mercy expired. The city seemed to know it. The air felt thick, unmoving, as if time itself had slowed to watch what would happen next. Arin felt it in his chest from the moment he woke, a pressure that had lived inside him for years but now pressed harder, sharper. Every calendar mark, every passing sunrise had dragged them here. Tomorrow, the sentence would be carried out.
For a decade, Arin had fought the law with nothing but persistence and exhaustion. Court after court. Petition after petition. He had learned the language of denial fluently—phrases wrapped in politeness, verdicts delivered with practiced indifference. His youth had worked against him. His poverty had sealed his fate. The system did not bend for those without names, without leverage, without wealth. Still, he had returned every time. Hope, even starved, refused to die easily. Each morning he woke believing—if only faintly—that today might be different. Each night he went to sleep knowing it was not.
Blue's execution drew closer regardless.
Arin's life had settled into a rhythm of restrained grief. He worked in Lbow's household still, his hands performing tasks that demanded obedience, not thought. The work kept him moving, kept him from collapsing under the weight of waiting. But memory slipped in everywhere. In the echo of footsteps along marble corridors. In the quiet spaces where Rimora's voice should have been. Her warnings. Her laughter. Her absence. Loss had layered itself over his days until it felt inseparable from breath.
That evening, as the courtyard was being cleared, something snapped between him and Lbow. It wasn't loud at first—just a word held too long, a glance misread. Then pride entered, then guilt, then the old wounds neither of them knew how to name. Their voices rose briefly, sharp and brittle, before falling away into silence. Rimora hovered between them without being spoken of. So did Blue. Some fractures did not need words to widen.
Then the message arrived.
Tomorrow.
The word landed like a blow.
Arin's hands stopped mid-motion, fingers locked around the cloth he was holding. The world narrowed. His chest constricted as though iron bands were tightening around his ribs. For a moment, he could not breathe. The years collapsed inward, every failed appeal crashing into the present at once.
Lbow stepped closer.
He placed a hand on Arin's shoulder, firm, grounding.
"If you truly love your brother," he said quietly, "you must go beyond boundaries."
Arin shook his head before the words fully reached him.
"No," he said. His voice trembled despite his effort. "I can't. I can't betray the law. Even for him."
The words tasted hollow as he spoke them. Law. Order. Justice. None of them had protected Blue.
Lbow's expression hardened, not with anger, but with something heavier—certainty.
"Think of your mother," he said softly. "She believed in you. She trusted you to protect him."
Arin swallowed. His throat burned.
"Can you deny her wish?"
Silence followed, thick and suffocating.
Somewhere beyond the walls, time continued its slow, merciless march. Tomorrow waited patiently. And in that moment, standing between obedience and loss, Arin felt the last fragile remains of innocence begin to fracture—quietly, irreversibly—under the weight of what he might be forced to become.
The memory struck Arin without warning, sharp enough to steal his breath. His mother's hands, warm and worn, smoothing his hair in the dim evenings. Her voice, low and careful, telling stories not to escape the world but to survive it. Every word she had spoken carried hope braided with endurance. And in that moment, Arin understood with devastating clarity that her dreams had never been meant for him alone. Blue had always been there too—small, laughing, clinging to the edges of her promises. The realization hollowed him. Tears burned behind his eyes, not falling, only gathering, heavy and humiliating.
That night, sleep never came. He lay still, staring into darkness, listening to the quiet breathing of a house that no longer felt safe. Fear crept in first—raw, paralyzing. Then duty followed, heavier, unavoidable. Love sealed it. By dawn, the decision was no longer a thought but a certainty etched into him. He would free Blue. He would tear him from the mouth of the system before it could close. They would run—far, unseen, beyond the reach of laws written to protect privilege and destroy the powerless. Whatever came after did not matter. What mattered was that Blue would live.
The plan was born in whispers.
Lbow listened without interruption, his face unreadable, his silence deliberate. When he finally spoke, his voice was calm, almost distant.
"There are passages," he said. "Old ones. Forgotten."
Arin felt the weight of the words settle into his bones.
Lbow's influence did not announce itself. It moved quietly—through overlooked servants, neglected records, tunnels sealed in memory but not in stone. He offered what he could: access, timing, guidance. Nothing more. Nothing less. Arin did not thank him. Gratitude felt too small for what was being risked.
The nights blurred together after that. Arin slept in fragments, if at all. His mind ran endlessly—guard rotations, keys, hinges, footsteps. He traced routes in his thoughts until they felt carved into muscle and nerve. Every second was measured. Every sound imagined. One mistake meant death. Not just his own.
The morning came anyway.
The city woke as it always did, indifferent, efficient, cruelly normal. Shops opened. Voices rose. Somewhere, an execution notice waited to be read aloud. Arin moved through the streets with his head down, his pulse hammering so loudly he was certain others could hear it. Each step carried him closer to a place built to erase people.
Inside the prison, the air changed. Stone and iron. Dampness that clung to the skin. The smell of old suffering that no amount of cleaning could remove. Every echo felt amplified—boots striking floor, keys brushing metal, breath caught too loudly in the throat.
Lbow did not look at him.
"Now," he murmured.
Arin moved.
The corridors narrowed. The execution chamber revealed itself in glimpses—dark wood, rope coiled with casual finality. Time pressed in, merciless. His hands shook as he knelt before the lock, fingers slick with sweat. The mechanism resisted. His heart threatened to tear itself free.
Click.
The sound was barely there, but it split the world open.
The door creaked as it gave way.
Blue looked up.
Paler than Arin remembered. Thinner. Older in the eyes. But alive.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The years, the fear, the waiting—all of it passed between them in silence. Blue stood slowly, uncertainty flickering, trust overriding it.
"Arin?" His voice cracked.
Arin reached out and closed his hand around his brother's wrist. Solid. Warm.
"I've got you," he said, barely above a breath.
They did not linger.
The tunnels swallowed them quickly, stone giving way to shadow, shadow to motion. They ran bent and breathless, guided by Lbow's signals, by instinct sharpened into desperation. Above them, the prison stood unmoving, unaware of the absence already forming inside its walls.
By the time the city lights thinned and the night opened wide, their lungs burned and their legs shook. But they did not stop. Behind them, tomorrow still waited—with its bell, its rope, its finality.
It would ring for someone else.
The brothers vanished into the dark, bound together by fear endured and love proven. Whatever world lay ahead was unknown, unforgiving, uncertain. But it would be faced together. And in that flight—silent, reckless, absolute—the last chains of innocence finally shattered, leaving only choice, consequence, and the unbreakable bond that had carried them beyond the reach of death.