Somewhere else, Lina was conversing with people in the courtyard. Talking, laughing, drifting ever closer to her orbit.

  Halwen watched from a distance, searching for an opening. A moment where he could finally speak to her alone.

  But it was impossible.

  Lina’s natural absurdity pulled people in. Aschezug recruits, Unterkreis teens, and even a few older cadets hovered nearby, drawn in without realizing why.

  Seeing her like this reminded Halwen of who she used to be. Someone from a lifetime ago.

  On one occasion, Halwen overheard a boy mock-confessing to Lina.

  It stirred something primal in him. An irrational, territorial anger, the kind that flared up like watching a boy flirt with your niece.

  This fucking kid’s got some nerve.

  You need a perfect score on the Reichsgrund Aptitude Battery before I’d even consider letting you court my niece.

  He held the rage in, swallowing it down like bitter medicine.

  But Lina didn’t fluster. She just laughed at the joke and kept making friends—unbothered, radiant in her own absurd way.

  A moment passed. Eventually, Lina stood alone, sipping from a mug.

  A perfect opening.

  At last, the guilt-ridden adult could approach the girl he failed.

  "That better not be beer, young lady," Halwen said as he approached.

  "Hahaha! Uncle Halwen, I don’t drink beer! I’m still your cute little niece who accidentally set the barn on fire, remember?"

  For a moment, she really did sound like the Lina he remembered. Joking, absurd, alive. The girl he had lost a year and a half ago.

  Lina had always been a strange one. Outgoing to the point of absurdity, she pushed herself into every circle, silver hair flashing like a banner. At first people ignored her; that hair was reason enough. But she never cared. She mingled, cracked jokes, joined every conversation whether welcome or not. And somehow, through sheer persistence, she softened even the sharpest edges around her.

  It came from her parents. They had looked at Lina as if she was a gem, and that constant admiration had forged her boundless confidence. That funny, unshakably bright girl was the one Halwen had believed dead. And now, impossibly, she was here again, familiar yet changed, as if some piece of her soul had been lost along the way.

  "Well, can you blame me for asking? After the shenanigans you pulled at old Gin's tavern?"

  "Ugh..."

  "I still don’t know where you got the grit to down an entire bottle of Stahlbock Drachenblut."

  Apparently, Lina had been something of a master of ‘acquisitions’. From a bread in the facility, then an entire wine bottle she had somehow “acquired.” No one ever figured out how she managed it.

  "Well, I learned from the best," Lina said, giving Halwen a playful nudge.

  The truth was, her mother and father were both hopeless lightweights.

  Halwen? Well, if a normal person needed eight glasses of water a day, he probably only needed four. The rest was wine or beer.

  "Well, young lady," Halwen replied, raising an eyebrow, "you can only drink when you’re older. And even then, I’ll be there to stop a certain silver-haired lunatic from twirling around the village plaza like a drunken ballerina."

  "Hahaha! You still remember that?" Lina laughed. "Pa and Ma grounded me for a month!"

  "Well, you deserved it, young lady." Halwen gave her a mock glare. "Helene and Markus are were things. But in your case? They were absolutely right. You really are one little hell-raiser."

  Then he tickled her.

  "Hahaha! Uncle, stop...!" Lina squealed, laughing helplessly.

  Halwen eased his hand away.

  And for a moment, it felt like everything was going to be alright.

  "I miss Pa and Ma," Lina said. Her voice had softened.

  Halwen nodded.

  "Me too. If only I was there sooner."

  A soft breeze passed between them. The moonlight was gentle. It was bright enough to see, soft enough to speak beneath.

  For a moment, it felt as if this conversation had been ordained by God.

  If such a thing still existed in this broken town.

  "Hey, Uncle… can I ask you something?"

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  He glanced at her. Said nothing. Just waited.

  "Why did you stop the procedure?"

  It’s for your own good. If they continue, you’ll be broken forever. I can’t stand your screams during the procedure. The thought surfaced in Halwen’s mind, as if it were enough to redeem him for letting the Facility experiment on her in the first place. The truth was simple: he was a hypocrite. He had allowed countless children to suffer under the same procedures, but when it came to Lina, he just couldn’t.

  And then, when Lina suddenly forgave him during their conversation in the chamber with Vierna and the Arkmarschall, he felt terrified. Terrified that the same indoctrination he had allowed to happen to so many other children was now happening to his niece.

  "I’m sorry, Lina," he said quietly. "I shouldn’t have let you come here."

  Lina shook her head. Her eyes didn’t waver.

  "I’m the one who asked to become strong. And… despite everything, this place has made me stronger. Uncle, you didn’t do anything wrong."

  "But bringing you here… it wasn’t right," Halwen said, his voice breaking slightly. "As an adult, I should’ve known better than to let you chase strength for the sake of revenge."

  “How could I not want that? They crucified Pa and Ma. My friend, Arelle—” her breath hitched, “—they burned her alive after doing… ‘things’ to her. And they killed Aunt Elira, too.”

  Halwen looked away. But she kept going.

  "Uncle… the only reason I stopped talking to you was because I was mad, mad at you for stopping the procedure.”

  Halwen froze, lips parting before he caught himself. His brow furrowed, eyes narrowing as if the words had knocked the breath out of him.

  "How can you say that?" he said, "I thought you hated what it did to you. I thought it was the scar. I stopped it for you, Lina. It was for your own good."

  "Uncle,” Lina stepped closer, cutting him off. "How is this ‘good’? You didn’t save me—you left me unfinished. Let them complete it. Please."

  Halwen looked at her, she looked like a normal child asking for a puppy, eyes round bright pleading like it’s her birthday present. If only she really did ask for a puppy.

  "No," Halwen said, shaking his head. "This isn’t you. You were never like this when we were in the village."

  “The village is gone, Uncle. My friends, my parents… even Aunt Elira. All of them burned. The only thing that matters now is making them pay for everything.”

  "Lina… REVENGE IS WRONG," Halwen said, his voice shaking now, barely holding together. "No matter how you word it. No matter how noble you think it is." He took a step toward her. His hands trembled. "And as an adult… I failed. I failed to teach you that."

  “…….”

  "I hated them too," he went on, choking on the words. "For what they did to your parents. And Elira—" His breath hitched, barely able to speak. "They skinned my wife alive, Lina. And she was pregnant with my son for God's sake. Then they fucking burn her like it was a normal thing to do."

  He reached toward her, voice cracking into panic. "This isn’t you. Please. This isn’t the Lina I knew."

  "It’s her, isn’t it?" His voice rose in desperation. "It’s Vierna. She’s twisted you—"

  CRACK.

  Porcelain shattered against the stone.

  Lina had torn the mask from her face, smashed it, hands bleeding. Crimson ran down her fingers, catching moonlight. She knelt, picked the largest shard, and pressed it to her throat.

  “Vierna didn’t twist anything that wasn’t already there, Uncle. The only reason I kept going was her… and my own desire. But if you can’t understand, then please, just kill me. Because I know…”

  Her voice was coarse, the same one she let Vierna hear in the chamber.

  "I know revenge is wrong."

  The wind shifted, gentle, almost reverent. It stirred the courtyard like a breath from something older than grief.

  "I remember what Pa and Ma taught me. ‘Forgive,so you'll be forgiven.’" Her lips twitched. "And I used to believe that."

  Her voice softened. "But then I saw their faces… melted into the wood of that cross." She looked down. "I didn’t care anymore. I don’t want to be forgiven. If it costs me my life, so be it. I’ll pay it gladly, as long as the Imperium finally dies."

  "I’m sorry, Uncle. What you said... it’s right. All of it. But I can’t."

  "I can’t be the girl you wanted me to be."

  "So please, Uncle. I can’t bear the thought of disappointing you again. Please… just let me go."

  Humans are strange, aren’t we? We spend so much time asking if we should do something, we forget to ask if we even could.

  The truth was, it had taken everything in Halwen just to say the words, to speak of forgiveness, to tell her to forsake revenge, to believe in a future beyond blood.

  That was the “right” thing to do, wasn’t it? The adult thing. The moral thing.

  But was it truly?

  When you were forced to watch your pregnant wife’s skin parted from her belly—when they tore your unborn child from her body while singing hymns to the sound of her screams.

  And when they called it “purification.”

  If morality demanded silence in the face of that…

  Then maybe morality was the real hypocrisy.

  And hearing Lina reject it without any shame or guilt stir something in him. Like for a moment, Lina was more mature than him. Mature enough to reject the false morality.

  What good were morals, if only the innocent had to obey them?

  It brought him a kind of clarity. The kind he had never dared face before.

  He knew, knew very well, that this wasn’t the ‘real’ Lina.

  Not the girl who danced barefoot in the rain.

  Not the girl who smiled sheepishly after accidentally burning down a barn because her spark magic made the hay glow like fireflies.

  This wasn’t her.

  This was someone forged by this place. Twisted by indoctrination and experimentation, cheered on by a phantom.

  But then again, was indoctrination really wrong? It gave Lina clarity, the kind that cut through the fog, that kept her standing when everything should’ve broke her.

  Maybe this version of Lina wasn’t a corruption, but a completion. After all, hadn’t Halwen believed in the project from the start? He hadn’t stood beside Leopold out of cruelty, but conviction. He genuinely thought the procedure could forge something strong enough to end the war.

  Even during his debates with Drecht, he defended it out of belief. So if indoctrination granted purpose, and experimentation forged strength, then perhaps neither were wrong. Perhaps they were the price of survival.

  And if Halwen could set aside his morals for just a moment… maybe everything was unfolding exactly as it should.

  The version of him, the one who faltered, who stopped the procedure, who let pity almost destroy Plan Ewige Schlange, was weak. Undisciplined. Unfit to shape the future.

  He had let emotion go unchecked. He had doubted the institution when it had never faltered.

  No more. No More playing mule in a lab coat. No more pretending to be the adult in the room. He would stop lying and hiding behind fake morality.

  Time moves on, the wind kept blowing, and the moon waited his decision.

  He stepped forward, slowly and carefully. He knelt before her, reached out, and gently took the shard from her trembling hand. Then, without a word, he pulled her into an embrace.

  "You’re never a disappointment Lina," he whispered. "I am always proud of you.”

  His voice now warm and no longer shaky.

  “And don't you worry, I’ll personally make sure your experiment is completed."

  Lina’s tears fell like black pearls sliding down her cheeks.

  "Thank you, Uncle, I love you." she whispered back. Her voice had changed, no longer coarse, no longer strained. This was the ‘real’ her.

  Revenge or Let go?