They met where the rooftop met the stars again, where the city felt small, and the sky felt large enough to hold regret.

“Tell me about Sevran,” Royushi asked. They had trained in silence until the night had learned the tune of their breathing. Now, the question landed like a stone tossed into a river.

Rikishu’s hologram was still and quiet. For a moment, he looked older than his face suggested, as if the weight of something that should have been shared alone had added years.

“Sevran was… reasonable once,” Rikishu said. “He was a man who could argue a point until bloodless and then make it useful. He believed in structure. In claiming resources. In the certainty that potential must be shaped.”

Royushi listened. “That sounds… efficient. Why does he scare you?”

Rikishu’s jaw tightened fractionally. “Because efficiency without consent becomes ownership. He thinks a problem should be solved even if the solution breaks people.” His voice was steady, but there was a small edge—like the sharpness of metal left out in the rain.

“He found me before the Citadel did,” Rikishu continued. “We argued for months. Strategies, tactics, ethics. He asked why I walked away from methods that would have made the Citadel invincible. I asked him why he would force people into shapes they didn’t choose.”

Royushi frowned. “So you disagreed.”

“We disagreed violently,” Rikishu said. “Not in the way of shouting and chaos, but in long negotiations that left both of us thinner for the truth. He believed the world required architects. I believed it required witnesses.”

Royushi tried to picture the two of them sitting at a table, maps between them, voices low and sharp. “And then?”

“The battle changed everything,” Rikishu said. “Sevran saw advantage where I saw ruin. When the enemy did what it did—when the sky fell,l and the field tore—Sevran wanted to claim the aftermath. He wanted to order people into rows and refine them into weapons. I could not do that.”

“You left?” Royushi asked.

“I left,” Rikishu said. “Not out of cowardice. Out of choice. I refused to let people be carved. But I promised someone I would return.”

Royushi remembered that line, the one Rikishu had said before: I promised I’d come back. He had forgotten how personal it was.

“You promised someone?” Royushi probed.

Rikishu nodded. “Her name was small against the war. She loved light books and hot tea. She believed in me. I told her I’d return. After the fight, after the order. I thought I could come back and be the same man who left.”

“And you weren’t.”

“No.” Rikishu’s light dimmed for an instant. “When I left, I had seen what the Citadel could do when refined with force. I had seen people change against their will. I could not be the person who let that happen. So I made fail-safes. I learned what I could outside of their reach. I prepared a way to watch. To teach. To keep people free enough to choose.”

Royushi’s throat tightened. “And she—?”

Rikishu looked at the horizon as if it might answer. “She waited. For a while. Then one day she stopped showing up at the cafe where we used to meet. Letters came back. I have to assume she moved on, or she found a new life. I do not know.”

Silence. The kind that made even the wind careful.

“That must hurt,” Royushi said finally.

“It does,” Rikishu answered. “But it hurt me into being careful. I made a choice. I chose waiting over claiming. That’s why I teach like I do—to build someone who chooses for himself, not to be chosen.”

Royushi swallowed. “You left someone waiting to stop others from being forced. That’s… complicated.”

Rikishu let out a breath that might have been a smile. “Everything worth doing is complicated.”

Royushi looked up at him. “Do you ever regret not going back sooner?”

Rikishu’s eyes were distant. “Every day. But regret is a poor teacher. Decisions are better.”

Royushi nodded. “I don’t want to be chosen by anyone.”

“You won’t be,” Rikishu promised quietly. “Not while I can stop it.”

Royushi’s chest felt crowded with something he didn’t have a word for. Gratitude, maybe. Or fear shaped like a small bird.

“You’re stubborn,” he said.

“So are you,” Rikishu replied.

They sat for a long time, two forms under a sky that had seen too much. Far below, a scout moved like a shadow, and a master planned questions. Somewhere else, a man named Sevran shifted his pieces across a map.

Choices were closing around them like hands. But for the first time since he’d arrived at the Citadel, Royushi felt as if he might choose a path himself.

The night held its breath with them.