In the hidden facility of the True Seers, Tiflos and Cain had returned to their nightly sessions. This time, they stood in Cain's private rooftop garden, where the distant lights of the city shimmered like earthly stars, telling the story of a civilization built upon the ruins of others. Cold air swept across the heights, yet neither man seemed to notice the chill.
"Do you know the fundamental difference between us and them?" Cain asked, gesturing toward the city spread beneath their feet. "They kill and call it a legitimate war… we kill and call it strategic necessity. The difference is only in the naming. The essence is the same."
Tiflos stared at the distant lights, as if searching for a single spark of true illumination among them. "And conscience?" he asked quietly. "Isn't that what separates good from evil?"
"Conscience is merely a tool," Cain replied in the tone of a teacher explaining a basic principle. "Isn't it conscience that prevents a soldier from fleeing the battlefield… that stops a doctor from abandoning a patient… that keeps you from abandoning Noor and Orion?" He paused, then continued, "You didn't lose your conscience, Tiflos. You transformed it. It became the protection of those you love instead of the protection of strangers. That, in itself, is moral evolution."
"And that justifies killing?" Tiflos pressed. "It justifies bloodshed?"
"The sun burns itself to light the universe… nature kills to preserve the strongest… and humans sacrifice some to save others," Cain answered, his eyes glinting in the darkness. "Everything in this universe operates by this simple equation. Why do you exclude yourself and believe you must be different?"
At that moment, Tiflos felt the thin veil separating him from savagery nearly vanish. Cain's words wove around him a web of twisted logic—one that was beginning to sound terrifyingly convincing.
---
Hours later, after relentless debate, Noor sat alone in her modest room, holding an old photograph of herself with Tiflos. In it, they stood laughing, their eyes filled with hope and innocence—before the organization corrupted them and poisoned their dreams. Her fingers traced the lines of his face in the picture, as if trying to touch him once more.
Elias entered quietly, his face etched with exhaustion and worry. "I know that look in your eyes," he said softly. "Are you planning to kill yourself?"
"No," she replied without lifting her gaze from the photo. "I'm planning salvation. If he sacrificed everything for us—his morals, his conscience, his soul—then the least I can do is try to save him from the hell he's living in."
"And how do you intend to do that?" Elias asked, his voice edged with warning. "He's become more dangerous than Cain himself. Lina's reports, before she left the continent, show that he killed seventy-three people in the past month alone. And he shows no sign of remorse."
Noor finally looked up. In her eyes burned a fire Elias hadn't seen in a long time. "I won't try to stop the killer," she said firmly. "I'll try to awaken the human inside him. I'll remind him of who he was… and who he can still become."
Elias sighed in surrender and quietly left her room.
Noor remained there, staring at the photograph in her hand, her gaze steady—the gaze of a woman who had already made her decision.
---
In the Resistance's secret hideout, preparations were underway at full speed. Liam calibrated advanced devices, while Elias packed medical bags and psychological sedatives that might help reverse the brainwashing Tiflos had endured.
"This will give you forty-eight hours at most," Liam said as he handed Noor a small, tightly sealed case. "After that, the entire security system will be after you. We won't be able to protect you."
Noor opened the case carefully. Inside were advanced tracking devices, a powerful sedative serum, several old photographs capturing moments of happiness with Tiflos—and the most important item of all: the second photograph she had once left with him, a symbol of their unspoken vow.
"I'll bring him back," she said with a resolve woven from courage, despair, and a faint tremor in her voice. "Or I'll die with him. I won't leave him alone in that darkness."
Elias looked at her with profound sorrow, his eyes carrying the worry of a father watching his daughter walk toward the abyss. "Do you truly understand that this may be your last meeting? That Cain could kill you both?"
"If that's how it ends," Noor answered, her voice shaking slightly, "then I want the last thing he sees to be this—that I didn't abandon him… just as he didn't abandon us when he sacrificed everything to protect us."