What the hell.
The words arrived before the thought that produced them had fully formed — the specific, involuntary quality of a response that bypasses the deliberate layer and comes from the particular, honest place of someone who has just processed, with the complete clarity of aftermath rather than the compressed urgency of the moment itself, exactly how close the arithmetic had been.
Not the trees.
Him.
If he had been even a fraction slower — the specific, measurable fraction between the body refining rank eight's threat sense registering the arrow's departure and the Astral Bone Vanguard's summoning completing the interception — the five trees would still be standing and he would be the specific, irreversible thing that was not. The cold that ran down his spine was honest and unperformed, the particular, genuine chill of someone who has looked at the gap between what happened and what almost happened and has found the gap uncomfortably narrow.
Peak body refining realm.
