By the time the sun reached its peak, the courtyard held nearly three hundred Forsaken.
August had stopped counting individual communities. They blurred together now (desperate faces, harmonic voices, children who shouldn't be here), all drawn by a lie wearing Arthur's name. The courtyard that had seemed large was now cramped with bodies, fear, and the growing certainty that sunset would bring something terrible.
"This is…" Lyka didn't finish. Didn't need to.
Arthur hadn't moved from the center in two hours. Just stood there, dead arm hanging, good arm supporting the greatsword that seemed heavier with each passing minute. But August could see him cataloging every arrival, every face, every child. The weight of each one adding to whatever calculation was breaking him from the inside.
"We need water," someone called out. "The young ones are…"
"There's a well," Arthur said without looking. "Northwest corner. Behind the third pillar."
How did he know that? When had he memorized the layout down to forgotten wells? But the Forsaken who went to look found it exactly where he said, and soon they had a makeshift distribution going. Small normalcies in the middle of orchestrated horror.
"Touching," Crownless observed from his position near the main entrance. "Even now, playing protector. Do you tell them the well water is clean? That I haven't poisoned it? Or do you let them wonder?"
"The water's clean," Arthur said simply. "You're not that small."
"No," Crownless agreed. "I'm exactly as large as I need to be."
A new group entered, and August's heart sank. Elderly Forsaken, moving slowly, probably from one of the remote settlements. They'd made the journey despite age and infirmity because they'd trusted…
"I'm sorry," Arthur said as they passed.
They looked at him with expressions that broke something in August. Not anger. Not betrayal. Just a tired understanding that this was always how it would end.
"Three hours until sunset," Crownless announced to the crowd. "Three hours to choose your future. Integration with purpose, or independence with…" He gestured at Arthur. "Whatever he's becoming."
"I'm not becoming anything," Arthur said quietly. "Just done pretending I'm not."
A child started crying somewhere in the crowd. The sound cut through everything else, sharp and accusatory. August watched Arthur flinch like he'd been struck.
"Shhh," a parent soothed. "It's okay. Arthur will…"
They stopped. Because what could they promise? That Arthur would save them? That the man who could barely stand would somehow fight off twenty armed figures and a brother who'd transcended ordinary limits?
"You know," Crownless said conversationally, "I've been thinking about our conversation. About choice."
Arthur said nothing.
"You're right that they should choose. But choice requires understanding consequences." He addressed the crowd. "So let me be clear about yours. Integration means joining a network of protected communities, sharing resources, building something larger than individual survival. Independence means…"
He paused, looking at Arthur.
"Independence means trusting your life to a man whose prosthetic arm died three hours ago. Whose body is failing under weights he refuses to share. Who came here knowing he couldn't save you but too proud to admit it."
"I'm not proud," Arthur said.
"No? Then tell them the truth. Tell them how this ends if they refuse integration."
Arthur finally looked up, and August saw something terrible in his eyes. Not rage. Not despair. Just… exhaustion so complete it had circled back around to clarity.
"If you refuse integration," Arthur said to the assembled crowds, "Crownless will order his people to kill you. I'll try to stop them. Some of you will die in the crossfire. Maybe most of you. Those who survive will scatter, marked as enemies of the new order he's building. You'll be hunted. Collected. Killed." A pause. "That's the truth."
The crowd stirred, fear rippling through like wind through grass.
"But," Arthur continued, "if you accept integration, you'll stop being who you are. Your thoughts will align with his vision. Your choices will serve his purpose. You'll be safe, yes. Protected, yes. But you won't be you anymore." Another pause. "That's also the truth."
"Such a binary thinker," Crownless sighed. "Always either/or, never and/also. They could be themselves AND part of something greater."
"Could they say no once integrated?"
"Why would they want to?"
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only answer that matters." Crownless moved into the courtyard proper, his twenty followers maintaining their positions. "But since you insist on clarity: no. Once integrated, the desire to leave doesn't arise. Because integration brings understanding of why leaving would be… suboptimal."
"Suboptimal," Arthur repeated. "Is that what we're calling the removal of free will now?"
"Free will." Crownless laughed, but it was sad. "Brother, when have any of us had free will? You didn't choose to become what you are. They didn't choose to be born Forsaken. I didn't choose to…" He stopped.
"To what?" Arthur prompted.
"To watch my brother break himself trying to carry everyone else's weight." Real emotion bled through. "Do you know what Ione said when you left? She said you'd finally found a weight heavy enough to kill you. That we should be happy for you."
Arthur's good hand tightened on the sword.
"She wasn't wrong," he said quietly.
"No. She wasn't. Which is why I'm offering them what you can't: a future without that weight. Without the constant fear. Without the need for broken protectors and impossible stands."
"Without choice."
"Without the illusion of choice," Crownless corrected. "There's a difference."
A young Forsaken, maybe fifteen in human years, pushed through the crowd.
"I want to ask something," they said, voice shaking but determined.
Both Arthur and Crownless turned to look at them.
"Ask," Arthur said.
"If… if we choose integration. Will we remember this? Remember choosing? Remember who we were?"
Crownless smiled gently. "You'll remember everything. But it will feel like a dream you're happy to have woken from."
The youth looked at Arthur. "And if we choose independence?"
"Then you'll remember this as the day you nearly lost yourself," Arthur said. "And you'll spend every day after fighting to keep that from happening again."
"That sounds…"
"Exhausting," Arthur finished. "It is. It's exhausting and painful and often feels pointless. But it's yours. Your exhaustion. Your pain. Your point or pointlessness to decide."
"The words of someone who's chosen suffering so often he's forgotten joy exists," Crownless observed.
"Maybe," Arthur agreed. "But they're my words. My suffering. My forgetting."
The youth stood between them, visibly torn. Around them, three hundred Forsaken waited to see what this one child would choose, as if it might make their own choice clearer.
"I…" They stopped, started again. "I want to think about it."
"Of course," Crownless said warmly. "You have until sunset."
They retreated back into the crowd, and August saw dozens of similar conversations starting. Small groups forming, debating, weighing impossible options.
"Two and a half hours," Crownless announced. "Use them wisely."
Arthur swayed slightly. Just a moment, barely noticeable, but Crownless caught it.
"You can't stand for another two hours," he said, and it wasn't mocking. Just observing.
"Watch me."
"I have been. For years. Watching you carry weights that would break anyone else. Watching you pretend the prosthetic isn't dying. Watching you act like sheer will can substitute for human limits."
"Sometimes it can."
"And when it can't?"
Arthur was quiet for a moment. Then: "Then you fall. But you fall standing up."
"Meaningless poetry from someone too tired to think straight."
"Probably."
They stood there, surrounded by hundreds of lives hanging on their philosophical differences. Brothers who'd become ideological opposites, each convinced the other was tragically wrong.
"Do you remember," Crownless said suddenly, "that game we played as children? Where we'd pretend to be kings?"
"You always won."
"Because you always let me." A pause. "Even then, you were protecting me from my own ambitions."
"You didn't need protecting. You needed…"
"What?"
"A brother who wasn't me."
Crownless went very still. "Is that what you think? That I wanted a different brother?"
"You cut off my arm."
"The Council ordered it. I argued against—"
"You held the blade."
Silence. Heavy and full of things that couldn't be unsaid.
"Yes," Crownless said finally. "I held the blade. Because I thought if it had to happen, it should be done by someone who loved you. Who would make it clean. Who would carry the weight of it after."
"And do you? Carry it?"
"Every day." Crownless touched his chest, where his heart would be if anatomy still applied to him normally. "It lives right here. Next to all the other weights we weren't supposed to carry alone."
Arthur's prosthetic sparked once, trying to move. The futility of it seemed to embody everything between them.
"I dream about it sometimes," Arthur said quietly. "The cutting. But in the dreams, you don't stop at the arm."
"Where do I stop?"
"You don't."
They looked at each other across years of hurt and history. Around them, the Forsaken communities continued their desperate debates, but for a moment it was just two brothers in a courtyard, carrying weights that had grown too heavy to share.
"Two hours," Crownless said, voice carefully neutral again. "Then choices get made."
"They're already being made," Arthur replied. "Every second someone doesn't choose is a choice."
"To delay. To hope for a third option that doesn't exist."
"To think. To weigh. To be human about it."
"Human." Crownless smiled bitterly. "Always coming back to that. As if humanity is something worth preserving unchanged."
"It's worth preserving uncollected."
"Even if it means they suffer? Even if it means you suffer watching them suffer?"
"Even then."
"You're going to fight me." Not a question.
"If I have to."
"You can barely stand. Your prosthetic is dead. You're running on will and stubbornness and not much else."
"I know."
"You'll lose."
"Probably."
"And they'll see you lose. See their protector fall. See that all your philosophy about choice means nothing when faced with power."
"Maybe. Or maybe they'll see that some things are worth falling for."
Crownless shook his head slowly. "Still the poet. Still wrapping suffering in pretty words."
"Still the revolutionary. Still thinking you can fix humanity by rewriting it."
"One of us is wrong."
"Both of us are wrong," Arthur corrected. "Just in different ways."
A commotion near the entrance. Another community arriving, but these moved differently. Not compelled but fleeing. They burst into the courtyard wild-eyed and gasping.
"Collectors!" one of them managed. "Companies of them. Moving on every settlement that hasn't answered the call. They're… they're not waiting for sunset."
The courtyard erupted. Panic, accusations, parents clutching children. The careful debates shattered against immediate threat.
"You said sunset!" someone shouted at Crownless.
"For those here," he replied calmly. "Those who refused the call entirely have made their choice by absence."
"You're forcing them to come here to die!"
"I'm encouraging them to come here to live. Differently than before, perhaps, but alive."
Arthur closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, August saw something shift. The exhaustion was still there, but underneath it…
"How many companies?" Arthur asked the newcomers.
"Six that we saw. Maybe more. Moving in coordination."
"Standard collection pattern?"
"No. They're… they're being thorough."
Arthur nodded slowly. "Crownless. Call them off."
"Why would I do that?"
"Because if you don't, I'm going to stop pretending I'm too tired to be what you made me."
"What I made you?" Crownless laughed. "Brother, you made yourself. I just held the blade that freed you to be it."
"Then you know what happens next."
"I know you'll try to be the monster they need. And fail. And fall. And break their faith in the process."
"Maybe." Arthur's good hand adjusted on the greatsword. "Want to bet their lives on it?"
The tension ratcheted higher. Three hundred Forsaken caught between immediate threat and philosophical extinction. Two brothers circling toward inevitable violence. And somewhere out there, collection companies moving on defenseless settlements.
"One hour," Crownless said finally. "I'll delay the companies one hour. To see what you do with it."
"What I do?"
"Whether you choose to keep being their symbol or start being their salvation. Whether you fall as Arthur the Protector or rise as something else."
"I know what you want me to become."
"Do you? Because what I want is for you to stop breaking yourself against impossible odds. To accept that some battles require more than one broken man with a dead arm and good intentions."
"Some battles require exactly that."
"Why?"
"Because someone has to show them it's possible. Someone has to stand between them and collection long enough for them to realize they can stand for themselves."
"Beautiful words. Empty results. How many have you saved, really? How many communities still exist because of your protection?"
"How many exist without themselves because of your integration?"
"All of them. Existing differently but existing."
"That's not—"
A scream cut through the argument. One of the Forsaken near the edge of the courtyard pointed upward. Shapes on the walls. The twenty followers had been joined by others. Many others.
"Insurance," Crownless explained. "In case you decided to be unreasonable."
"How many?"
"Enough."
Arthur looked around the courtyard. Counted angles, distances, probabilities. His tactical mind running calculations that all ended the same way.
"There's no version of this where everyone lives," he said quietly.
"No," Crownless agreed. "There isn't. There never was. That's what I've been trying to tell you. Sometimes the only choice is who dies and who changes."
"And you've decided you get to make that choice for them."
"I've decided to be honest about the choice. You're the one pretending they have options that don't exist."
The Forsaken communities pressed closer together. Parents shielded children. Elders moved to protect youth. The human impulses of protection and sacrifice playing out in harmonic bodies.
"Forty-five minutes," Crownless announced. "Choose quickly. Choose wisely. Or don't choose and let the choice be made for you."
Arthur turned to face the crowd. His prosthetic hung dead. His flesh arm trembled from the sword's weight. He looked like what he was: a man pushed past every limit, held up by will alone.
"I can't save all of you," he said simply. "I probably can't save most of you. If you want guarantees, choose integration. If you want protection, choose collection. If you want to live, choose Crownless."
He paused, swaying slightly.
"But if you want to choose… then choose knowing the cost. Choose knowing some of you will die for it. Choose knowing I'll fail to protect you. Choose knowing everything they've said about the price is true."
"Then why?" Someone called out. "Why choose independence if it costs so much?"
Arthur smiled. It was tired and sad and somehow still warm.
"Because the cost is yours to pay or not pay. Because your death or life belongs to you. Because even failed choices are still choices." He looked at Crownless. "And because someone needs to prove it's possible, even if they fall doing it."
"Thirty minutes," Crownless said softly. "The collection companies are moving."
Arthur nodded. Adjusted his grip one more time. Looked at the assembled Forsaken who'd trusted his name enough to walk into a trap.
"Whatever you choose," he said, "I'll stand between you and anyone who tries to take that choice away. For as long as I can stand."
"Which won't be long," Crownless observed.
"No," Arthur agreed. "It won't. But it'll be enough."
"Enough for what?"
Arthur's smile turned sharp. "For them to see what freedom costs. And decide if they want to pay it."
The sun continued its descent. The collection companies closed in. Three hundred Forsaken faced an impossible choice while two brothers prepared to show them exactly what choosing meant.
The breaking point hadn't arrived yet.
But it was coming.
And when it did, everyone would learn why Arthur had spent so many years trying to avoid it.