# Chapter 22
3G was waiting in the training yard when Kumo found him, well past the hour they usually kept, sharpening a dagger he didn't need sharpened. He didn't look up when Kumo approached.
"Old Josh finally told you," he said. Not a question.
"You knew he would."
"I told him to, eventually. Didn't think it'd be this soon, or this way." 3G set the whetstone down and finally met his eyes. "How much did he give you?"
"Enough to know what I am. Not enough to know what to do about it."
3G nodded slowly, like a man confirming something he'd already guessed. "That sounds like him. Old Josh gives people exactly as much truth as he thinks they can survive, and not a grain more. Spent a long time deciding whether to be grateful for that or furious about it. Never quite landed on one."
Kumo sat across from him, uninvited, and 3G let him.
"I want to know about the guild," Kumo said. "Not what they did to me. What it was for. What you built it to be, before it went wrong."
Something shifted in 3G's face — old ground, walked carefully. "I built it because I got tired of watching talent like yours get thrown away by people who only valued bloodline. Kids with nothing, kids the noble houses would never look twice at, kids the Empire used up and discarded the moment they stopped being useful. I wanted somewhere that judged on skill instead of blood." He let out a short, humorless breath. "Then I let it get run by people who cared more about the coin that skill brought in than the reason I'd built the thing at all. You didn't betray something good, Kumo. You put down something that had already rotted past what I meant it to be. I understood that the day I found out — I just needed a few years to stop being angry about how I found out."
"Is that why you're still angry at the Empire, and not at me?"
"I'm not angry at either of you anymore," 3G said. "I'm angry at a system that keeps making the same mistake — using people like us until we're inconvenient, then deciding what to do with the wreckage. Your friend Elina. My guild. You, if Old Josh had made a different choice tonight." He studied Kumo for a long moment. "You've decided something. I can see it on you."
"I can't stay here." Kumo's voice was quiet, certain in a way it hadn't been an hour ago. "Not because of what I am. Because of what staying means. Old Josh already told me — the moment this is confirmed beyond that room, I stop being a person and start being an asset. Something to protect, or use, or hand off to someone else's plan. I've spent my whole life being useful to people who never once asked what I wanted out of it. I'm done."
3G didn't argue. He just watched him, weighing something.
"There's a network," he said finally. "People who don't answer to the Empire, or the gods it kneels to. Rebels, the crown calls them — though from where I stand, they're just the only ones left asking the same question I asked when I started my guild. Whether a person's worth is something you're born with, or something you earn."
"You know how to reach them."
"I know people who know people. That's usually as close as anyone honest gets." 3G reached into his coat and pulled free a small, unremarkable token — worn metal, no markings Kumo could immediately place. "This gets you a conversation, not a welcome. What happens after that is yours to earn, same as everything else you've ever had."
Kumo took it. It weighed almost nothing, and somehow felt heavier than his blades.
"Why are you helping me?"
3G considered the question longer than Kumo expected. "Because four years ago, a thirteen-year-old boy decided he'd rather burn down the only life he had than keep being used by it. I've spent every year since wishing someone had handed a version of me that choice, back when it might have mattered." He stood, tucking the whetstone away. "I'm not your family, Kumo. I'm not going to pretend I've earned that. But I know what it costs to walk away from everything you've built a life around, and I'd rather you do it with somewhere to land than without one."
"What do I tell them?" Kumo asked. "Spencer. Darrien. You."
"Tell Darrien nothing — he'll find out same as everyone else, and it'll go easier for him if he can say he never knew. Spencer's your business, not mine." 3G's expression didn't shift, but something in his voice did, just slightly. "As for me — you don't tell me anything. You disappear, the way you were taught to. I never saw you tonight. That's the only lie either of us needs to tell."
Kumo closed his hand around the token.
He didn't go back to his room. Didn't pack anything that could be traced, didn't leave a note, didn't let himself walk past the rooftop where he and Spencer used to sit. Some goodbyes weren't kindnesses. Some were just openings for someone to talk him out of the one decision he'd made entirely for himself in four years.
At the eastern gate — the same gate he'd left through days ago, escorting a man who'd survived and a girl who hadn't — Kumo paused only once, long enough to feel the weight of Rockville at his back one final time: the only home he'd ever known, built on a debt he'd never chosen and a bloodline he'd never asked for.
Then he walked into the dark, and didn't look back.