The bridge still stood.
Scarred. Cracked. Half-charred and screaming quietly under the weight of what it had survived.
But it stood.
By the time the last echoes of battle faded into the ravine, Ankalyon was gone. Not routed. Not chased.
Simply erased from the stone span they had tried to turn into a grave.
Night came slowly after that.
Too slowly.
Ken didn't remember leaving the bridge.
He remembered the vibration collapsing inward.
Remembered the world going white.
Remembered Lyra's hand gripping his collar before the ground disappeared.
Everything after that blurred.
---
The tavern smelled like smoke, wood, and something bitter that burned the nose.
Laughter echoed off the low ceiling, rough and unpolished. Tankards slammed against tables. Someone was already telling the story wrong.
Ken sat stiffly at the edge of a long wooden bench, hands wrapped around a mug he hadn't touched.
He stared into it like it might explode.
"This," Ishren said loudly, dropping into the seat beside him, "is what surviving looks like."
Ken blinked.
"I thought taverns were… quieter."
Ishren burst out laughing.
"Gods no. Taverns are where warriors process trauma badly."
Across the table, Bran leaned back in his chair, his massive frame somehow balanced on two legs as he drank deeply. His arm was wrapped in fresh bandages, already darkening with blood.
Maelis sat further down, hood lowered, silver eyes half-lidded as she listened more than she spoke. The shadows around her were calmer now. Almost sleepy.
Lyra stood near the counter, arguing with the tavern keeper about the quality of the ale.
Ken glanced around again.
This was real.
No alarms.
No vibration screaming through stone.
No death waiting on the next breath.
Just… noise.
"You're not drinking," Bran noted without looking at him.
Ken lifted the mug slightly.
"I don't think I'm allowed."
That got everyone's attention.
Lyra turned around slowly.
"…What?"
Ken cleared his throat.
"I'm seventeen."
Silence.
Then Ishren choked on his drink.
"You're kidding."
"No."
Bran finally turned, staring at Ken with open disbelief.
"You cut a war construct in half," he said. "But you can't drink."
Ken nodded.
"Apparently those are separate qualifications."
Maelis smiled faintly.
Lyra walked over and took the mug out of Ken's hands, replacing it with another.
This one smelled sweeter. Lighter.
"Juice," she said. "Fermented just enough to make you feel included."
Ken looked at it.
Then at her.
"Thanks."
She sat across from him instead of beside him this time, resting her elbows on the table.
"You know," Ishren said, leaning forward, eyes bright, "when that thing formed on the bridge, I thought we were dead."
"So did I," Bran added calmly.
Maelis nodded once.
Ken swallowed.
"And when I stepped forward," he said slowly, "I thought I was too."
Lyra didn't look away from him.
"But you didn't hesitate," she said.
Ken shook his head.
"I did. Just… not long enough to matter."
There was a pause.
Then Bran raised his tankard.
"To the bridge," he said.
Ishren grinned and raised his own.
"To Omicron Slash."
Ken flinched.
Lyra smirked.
"Oh don't pretend you don't like it."
"I named it in the moment," Ken muttered. "I didn't think it would stick."
"It stuck," Maelis said quietly. "The vibration cut clean. No waste. No excess."
Ken looked at her.
"That's good?"
Bran drank again.
"You ended the fight," he said simply. "Everyone else was holding. You finished it."
Ken stared down at his mug.
"My arms still feel like they're breaking."
Lyra leaned back.
"You'll heal."
"And next time?" Ken asked.
She met his eyes.
"Next time," she said, "you won't be alone in front."
That settled something in his chest.
The tavern roared again as someone across the room slammed a chair down and started singing terribly. Ishren joined in immediately.
Ken smiled before he realized he was doing it.
This wasn't the battlefield.
This wasn't training.
This was something else.
Something fragile.
Something earned.
Ken took a careful sip of his drink.
It tasted awful.
He didn't care.
For the first time since the war had claimed him, Ken Elyoss wasn't thinking about the next fight.
He was thinking about staying long enough to have stories worth telling after it.
And somewhere deep inside him, the vibration rested.
Quiet settled in after the laughter crested.
Not silence.
Just a softer noise. The kind that slips in when people stop performing and start being tired.
Ken rested his forearms on the table. The wood was rough, worn smooth by a thousand hands that had done the same thing. He traced a shallow groove with his thumb, letting the sensation anchor him.
"You ever think about how close it was?" he asked suddenly.
No one answered right away.
Bran was the first to speak, voice low.
"Every time," he said. "If I don't, I get careless."
Ishren leaned back, chair creaking.
"I try not to," he admitted. "If I think too hard about it, I stop being fast."
Maelis lifted her gaze.
"I think about it later," she said. "When it's quiet. When the shadows don't move unless I tell them to."
Ken nodded slowly.
"That's when it hits me too," he said. "After."
Lyra studied him, not interrupting.
Ken hesitated, then continued.
"When I stepped forward… I wasn't brave," he said. "I wasn't confident. I just knew that if I didn't move, someone else would."
Bran's grip tightened slightly on his tankard.
"That's what being frontline actually is," he said. "It's not wanting to die. It's deciding who doesn't have to."
Ken looked at him.
"You always talk like you're already dead."
Bran smiled faintly.
"No," he said. "I talk like I've survived long enough to know it's borrowed."
The table went quiet again.
Ishren broke it with a snort.
"Gods, this is getting heavy. Someone say something stupid."
Lyra raised an eyebrow.
"You volunteered."
Ishren grinned.
"Ken," he said, leaning closer, "did you feel it when you cut it? The moment everything lined up?"
Ken's fingers curled unconsciously.
"Yes," he said. "And that's what scares me."
Maelis tilted her head.
"Why?"
"Because it felt right," Ken replied. "Too right. Like the world wanted it to happen."
Lyra's expression softened.
"That feeling doesn't mean you're meant to die," she said. "It means you touched the edge of what you can become."
Ken looked at her.
"And if I go too far?"
She didn't answer immediately.
"Then we pull you back," she said finally. "That's what teams are for."
Bran nodded.
"You don't fight alone anymore," he added. "Not if we have anything to say about it."
Ken swallowed.
No one had ever said that to him before.
Not like this.
Not without conditions.
Ishren raised his mug again, this time less theatrically.
"To not doing this alone," he said.
Maelis lifted hers a fraction.
Lyra clinked hers gently against Ken's cup.
Ken hesitated.
Then raised his drink too.
They drank.
The tavern noise swelled again, but it felt distant now, like a storm heard from inside a safe room.
Ken leaned back, shoulders finally loosening.
"Hey," he said quietly, "when this war's over…"
Ishren snorted.
"Careful. That sentence gets people killed."
Ken smiled anyway.
"…do people still come to places like this?"
Bran chuckled.
"First place they go," he said. "To remember what they didn't lose."
Ken nodded.
He liked that answer.
The vibration inside him remained still.
Not gone.
Just… content to wait.
For once, Ken Elyoss wasn't defined by what he could destroy.
He was defined by who had sat at the table with him after.
And that felt like something worth surviving for.