Chapter 17: The Choice Not Taken
The Wheel felt heavier that morning.
Maybe it was the frost in the Vilnius air. Maybe it was the weight of a boy's future sitting quietly beside me. Or maybe it was the history in my coat pocket — the blood, the pain, the lives changed forever by a single spin.
Milo stood in the courtyard, his breath misting in the pale winter light. Snow clung to his lashes. He didn't look at me.
"You don't have to do this," I said.
"I know."
"You can walk away. There's still a version of you that doesn't have to become something else."
He turned. His face wasn't hardened. It was calm. Steady.
"But if I walk away, those people win."
I didn't argue. Some wars aren't fought on battlefields.
---
We sat at an old wooden bench, worn smooth by time and weather. I placed the Wheel between us. It gleamed faintly — like something ancient trying to remember what it once was.
Milo stared at it for a long time.
His hand hovered over the bone handle.
Then… he pulled it back.
He exhaled.
"No," he said.
I didn't move. I waited.
"I can't become like them," he whispered. "If I go through with this, I'll lose my sister all over again."
Elian, who had been watching from the chapel steps, smiled faintly. There was pride in his ruined face. A glint of something rare: hope.
"You made a hard choice," he said. "The right kind."
Milo looked to me.
"Do you think I made the right decision?"
I looked at the Wheel, then back to him.
"Evil always gets its karma," I said. "Sooner or later. Often when it least expects it."
---
Milo stayed one more night at the monastery.
He slept better than he had in months.
By morning, he was gone.
He didn't say goodbye.
He didn't need to.
---
Four days later, in a café in Bergen, he sat alone, drinking cheap coffee and watching the small TV behind the counter.
The news anchor's voice was sharp, urgent.
"…breaking story involving the arrests of five major figures in an underground trafficking ring—"
Milo froze.
Photos flashed across the screen. Names he knew. Faces he hated.
One had been hospitalized after a mysterious accident.
Another had been outed by a whistleblower who turned out to be their own lawyer.
Two had turned on each other.
The last… was missing.
Gone.
Milo stared at the screen.
He didn't speak. He didn't blink.
Then he heard my voice in the back of his mind.
Evil always gets its karma… sooner or later.
He smiled.
A small, real smile.
Then he pulled out a crumpled notebook.
He opened to a page titled "Lina's Dream."
He wrote beneath it:
Dentistry school — application deadline: April 3rd.
He tapped the pen twice on the table.
Then he got up.
And walked out into the cold, bright day.
Toward a future that might finally be his own.
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