Part Eighty-One — What Almost Happened

　I didn't sleep well that night, turning the day over in pieces I didn't much like examining.

I almost killed him.

A kid, barely older than some of Eris's own trainees, and I almost took his head off over nothing more than a moment of stupid pride.

If Ignivar hadn't stopped me—

I don't actually know what would have happened, if he hadn't stopped me.

That's the part that actually scares me.

　Eris found me sitting outside long after the rest of Horizoncrest had gone quiet, Ace curled nearby, both of them apparently unwilling to leave me entirely alone with whatever I was working through.

"You've been quiet since you got back," she said, settling beside me, finding my hand the same way she always did.

"I scared myself today," I admitted. "The second Anti-Subconsciousness said 'Holy Knight,' something in me just — went somewhere else. Cold. Empty. I don't fully remember deciding to swing at him. I just remember the blade already moving."

"That's the same thing that happened the night Doran and Fenrik died," Eris said, quiet, careful. "Isn't it. The same shape of thing."

Yeah. It is.

I hadn't wanted to say it out loud, but yeah.

"I thought I'd gotten better at holding it back," I said. "Years of training, Ignivar's teaching, all of it. And one word — just one word, 'Holy Knight' — and I was right back at the edge of losing myself entirely."

"Maybe that's not something training fixes," Eris said. "Maybe it's just something you have to keep choosing to hold back, every single time it shows up, for as long as it keeps showing up."

That's not a comforting thought.

It's probably an honest one, though.

"For what it's worth," she added, "you didn't actually kill him. Ignivar stopped you, yes, but you also let him stop you. You didn't fight past his hand to finish it."

"I don't know if that's meaningfully better," I said. "Or if I just got lucky that someone stronger than me happened to be standing close enough to catch it."

"Both things can be true," Eris said. "You can be grateful he was there, and still trust that some part of you would have stopped eventually, even without him."

I want to believe that.

I'm honestly not sure I do, yet.

　Ace, quiet through most of this, finally spoke up through the link.

For what it's worth, I do not believe you are the same as whatever killed those knights in the mansion.

That version of you had no hesitation at all, no awareness, nothing recognizable in it.

Today, you hesitated enough that Ignivar's hand actually mattered.

That is a meaningful difference, even if it does not feel like enough of one tonight.

Thanks, Ace. I think I needed that distinction spelled out, honestly.

"You're allowed to be shaken by this," Eris said, gentle. "Doesn't mean you're becoming something dangerous. Just means something dangerous is still part of you, same as it probably always will be. The work is holding it, not eliminating it."

　I sat with that a long while, the cold, distant feeling from earlier finally fully draining out of me, replaced by something more familiar — tired, human, genuinely unsettled, but present in a way the earlier version of myself hadn't been.

Vahlreth and Skorne are still out there.

The Church is going to come back, now that they know the barrier can be breached.

And apparently, one word is still enough to nearly turn me into something I don't want to be.

I need to actually get stronger.

Not just physically.

Whatever that other part of me is — I need to understand it, not just hope it stays quiet.

"I'm going to ask Ignivar to push harder," I said, finally. "Properly harder. Not just combat. Whatever helps me actually hold onto myself, even when someone says the wrong two words at the wrong moment."

"I'll help however I can," Eris said. "So will Ace. So will everyone here, probably, if you actually let them."

Yeah.

I think I'm finally starting to understand that letting them help isn't weakness.

It's just what family actually looks like, most days.

　We sat together a while longer, the quiet settling into something steadier, before finally, eventually, heading back inside to whatever rest either of us could actually manage that night.