Truth: Choose.
The word hit bone.
Harun stood hands-up, rifle barrel cold at the base of his skull.
Oil. Iron. That thick, wrong sweetness in the air.
Lanterns carved the square into hard planes and deep shadow.
In the cage, the boy stared only at the bowl.
Hunger had eaten everything else.
"Safety," the commander said, not turning. "On."
"It's off," the young guard behind Harun whispered. "Sir—"
"Then put it on."
A shaky click.
The barrel eased a hair, then settled back—metal not trusting hands.
Harun kept palms open, spine straight.
Felt the young man's quick breath on his neck.
"Bring him," the commander said. "Relic-bearers like to watch. Let him see what hunger becomes when it learns a shape."
The hoop-man nudged the bowl closer.
Thick liquid climbed the rim and clung.
The caged boy made a sound that wasn't a word or a whine.
Almost a snarl.
Rust on Harun's tongue.
The Mask pressed hot, then cold—fever arguing with itself.
Truth: If he drinks, he learns to be hungry.
Truth: If he starves, he learns to be dead.
"What's the third truth?" Harun breathed.
Truth: There isn't one you like.
"Move," the guard said, pushing the rifle. "Hands high."
Harun took two steps into the light.
His shadow climbed the cart, broke across the bars.
The boy flinched from the line like it weighed something.
The commander finally turned.
Square face. Scarred brow. Jaw made for arguments.
Cleaner coat than the others.
"Mask," he said, like swatting an insect off dinner. "We've had enough of you tonight."
Harun said nothing.
Words bent wrong around the Mask.
He kept his eyes on the boy—on cracked lips, on the bowl's shine, on sweetness that crawled under tongues like small animals.
"Name?" the commander asked, ledger-first and human later.
Silence.
The young guard flinched as if quiet could cut.
"Fine," the commander said. "Watch and learn."
A nod to the bowl-man. "By the page."
"Sir," the young guard murmured—and softer, caught by the Mask's heat—"my boy."
Truth: His son coughs blood at night and bites the blanket to hide it.
Harun closed his eyes for one heartbeat.
Opened them on ash in the guard's brows, a jawline nicked by bad light and worse blades.
He should've been home.
A chair by a bed.
Counting breaths.
"Don't," Harun said quietly. "If I move, you twitch. If you twitch, you shoot. If you shoot, your hands will fail when you try to hold your boy."
The guard's mouth opened, closed.
The barrel trembled.
"Shut him up," the commander said, mild as a clerk.
The air clicked into lattice—posts, rope-burned stone, lamp hooks like patient throats.
Harun saw the page the commander meant to read:
Bowl tips. The boy drinks. Boy changes. Men die.
Cage breaks. The frame falls.
The bell tolls twice—then never again.
Another page:
Strike first.
Shots. Blood on Harun's hands.
Bowl smashed. Chaos. Running.
A mother wakes to an empty pallet anyway.
A boy waits by a mill door for a medic who never comes.
Truth: Mercy is a sword. You don't get to keep it clean.
"Do you want him to live?" Harun asked the guard. "Your boy?"
The commander laughed once without humour. "Don't let him talk to you, Tallen."
Chin jerk at the bowl. "Pour."
The liquid climbed the lip.
Fell off a slow rope.
Harun felt the choice pull like bone from a wound.
Stone and watch.
Blade and move.
Which did the city need?
He counted boots because counting kept his knees from breaking.
Left. Right. Left. Pause. Left.
Let the Mask's heat fill between beats so thoughts couldn't hatch.
The rope of liquid touched the boy's fingers.
Harun's heel shifted a finger's breadth.
The barrel pressed harder against his skull in reflex.
Harun stopped.
The hoop clanged against the bars.
The boy hissed like a pot spitting on coals.
"Steady," the commander said—eyes on the bowl, on the future he preferred.
Truth: Break the chain, and it drags you with it.
Fittings. Pins. Rope through rings to take weight.
A crate of spares.
A bucket of black-flecked water.
A small hammer under the far wheel.
He knew how to make cages fall wrong.
He knew how to make crowds run right.
Not both—
not and keep the young guard breathing.
"Listen," Harun murmured. "When I move, step back with your left foot. Not right. If you step right, you'll fire."
"I—"
"Left."
The guard swallowed.
The barrel steadied a fraction.
Left. Right. Left. Pause. Left.
The bowl tipped further.
A match-under-glass hum thrummed in Harun's bones—the Mask drawing a breath that wasn't air.
It wanted the instant between law and breaking.
The crack where truth takes hold.
"Now," Harun told fear like a dog. "Heel."
He slid the chisel into his palm.
Turned his head a degree—let steel scrape bone, not soft places.
The guard stepped back with his left because the world had its hands on his muscles.
Harun's elbow slammed the rifle aside.
A shot tore splinters above the cart.
Shouts.
The bowl trembled in gloved hands.
The rope of liquid thickened.
The boy bared teeth—almost still a smile.
Harun didn't reach the bowl.
He kicked the cart's worn wheel—age had eaten a finger of it.
The cart lurched.
The bowl slipped—then steadied; the gloved man had good hands and worse orders.
"Down!" the commander barked, as if words could boss gravity.
Harun stabbed the chisel into the hoop-man's thigh.
A scream. The pole dropped.
He caught it, slammed the hoop over the bowl, and pinned it to planks.
The gloved man yanked.
Harun twisted—the leverage did the heavy work.
Behind, the guard cursed at a jammed bolt.
The commander raised his pistol.
The square tightened like a wire over two nails.
Truth: Make it a fight and you lose.
Harun wrenched the pole and let go.
The hoop sprang.
The bowl flew.
It hit the cart's edge and shattered.
Thick liquid splashed, smoked—
as if the stone itself had gagged and spat.
The boy screamed.
A tearing sound that made men small inside their boots.
He slammed himself into bars, hands stretching for the black smear like a man for rain.
The commander fired.
Sparks off iron. Cloth sliced.
"Contain him! Contain the sample!"
Harun snatched the little hammer and snapped it into the crate of pins.
Iron clattered everywhere.
The older guard folded to tidy by reflex—order cannot watch chaos without bleeding.
Harun slammed his shoulder into the axle.
The cart's shadow shortened a thumb.
Pointless—except the commander hated things moving without orders.
He took one step he shouldn't have.
Truth: Put the mistake in someone else's body.
"Stop!" the young guard shouted, the word hitting Harun's back like a thrown stone. "Don't—"
"Don't what?" Harun said, Mask edge catching lantern light.
"Don't save your boy? Or don't make you choose?"
The young man's face twisted.
He stepped left without meaning to—opening the space Harun needed.
He didn't lower the rifle.
He didn't raise it.
His mouth formed the words, 'Sorry, please, let me.'
The Mask breathed in.
Truth: Strike first.
Harun looked: cage, clawing fingers, black smear spreading; pistol, bleeding thigh, men grabbing pins, lanterns jittering.
He looked at his own hands.
He didn't know if they were telling the story of a medic or a weapon—or the ugly one where a city lives because someone else doesn't.
He breathed out.
Counted one more time because rhythm is a world.
Left. Right. Left. Pause. Left.
He moved—
—straight past the pistol's line,
—through the open space the guard had given,
—and drove the hoop's iron ring down over the boy's reaching hands.
Bars sang.
The hoop locked his wrists clear of the smear.
The boy shrieked.
The commander's pistol snapped to Harun's heart.
The young guard shouted, "Hold—!"
Lantern light flared—
And, beneath it, more boots hit the square.
Truth: You've stolen one second.
Truth: You will pay for it with ten.