For a moment, the room seemed to breathe. The minister's shoulders slumped slightly, as if the argument had drained him. Kira's posture softened; she watched Sian with a complicated tangle of emotions. The little boy's wooden soldier slipped from his hand, rolling across the polished floor until it stopped at Sian's boot. The boy giggled when he noticed, then pushed it back toward him as if making an offering.
Sian smiled—small, private, the kind of smile born in tight spaces. It was joy rationed, fragile enough to wither if shown too openly. Many had judged him before, even seasoned veterans like General Lan, who could pierce beyond rumors and headlines to glimpse something human: grief, endurance, and a stubborn kind of mercy.
The old man's voice rose with one final, deliberate sentence.
"Thank you." The words were not an order from a general, but a plea from an old soldier.
