Langford’s body lay where it had fallen, and James turned away from it.

The car park was still burning. Water came down through the broken ceiling in sheets, the fire alarms screamed somewhere above, and the whole structure groaned like it had not finished deciding whether to come down.

The Dark Knight stood behind him, sword low. The wolf kept its weight near the broker and the few men still breathing.

[AUTHORITY RELEASE: 23:46]

James walked toward his uncle.

He did not rush. That was the part that made it worse.

His uncle dragged himself backward through the blood and the dust, the ruined leg trailing useless behind him.

"James." His voice came out thin. "James, son, this — this has gone too far. You’ve made your point. Everyone’s seen it."

James kept walking.

"We’re family." The uncle’s back hit a fallen slab and he could go no further. "Whatever they told you, whatever this looks like — your father would not want—"

"Don’t."

It was the only word James gave him, and it was quiet, and it landed harder than a shout.

The uncle’s mouth kept moving but the words stopped coming. There was no Langford left to stand between them now. There was only the boy and the black blade and the cold coming off it, and the man on the floor understood, finally, that he had run out of people to hide behind.

The fire alarms screamed. Concrete cracked somewhere overhead and dropped. The uncle’s breathing came fast and high.

James took another step.

The ramp lit up with movement.

TRB Enforcement came down it in formation, and they came carefully.

They had anti-Challenger restraints on their belts and suppression shields up in front of them, and two of them carried containment artifacts instead of weapons. They did not charge. Every one of them had watched what the boy at the center of the room had just done to a royal Paladin, and not a single one of them was in a hurry to be next.

The captain stopped at the edge of the wreckage and kept his shield up.

"James Ganner." His voice was steady and formal, the voice of a man choosing every word. "Dismiss your summons. Seal the weapon. Step away from the men on the ground."

James did not move.

The Dark Knight shifted once, a half-step, her great sword scraping the concrete.

The wolf lowered its head and pulled its lips back off its teeth.

Every officer in the line went still.

[grimreaper_99]: oh no. oh no theyre gonna try to arrest him

[tower_dublin]: DONT. do not point those at him. did you not just WATCH

[viewer_0451]: one wrong move and this gets so much worse monkaW

[Sadge_enjoyer]: please just let him stop on his own. please

James took one more step toward his uncle.

The captain’s hand tightened on his shield. "Last warning—"

A new voice cut across the level, carried through the enforcement channel and pushed out loud enough for James to hear it.

O’Shea.

"James. Your mother is under our protection right now. The girl is safe with her. The men who organised this are in the open and they are not leaving." A pause. "It’s done. You don’t have to do the rest."

James stopped.

He stood over his uncle for a long moment, the scythe still in his hand, the cold still pouring off it.

Then his grip eased.

[GRAVE COMMAND: RETURN]

The Dark Knight straightened out of her stance. The wolf backed off the men and went still.

[REANIMATED UNITS DISMISSED]

The two undead came apart into dark smoke and were gone.

James lowered the scythe. The black blade folded back in on itself, the frost climbing down off his wrist, until the weapon was a broken, sealed thing again in his hand.

[AUTHORITY RELEASE — ENDED]

He looked at the lens hanging in the corner of his vision.

Then he ended the stream himself, and the feed went dark.

The moment it did, Enforcement moved fast.

They put restraints on the uncle. They pulled the broker off the pillar and bound his hands. They cuffed the few hired men who had survived the fight and dragged them upright.

James they handled differently.

Two officers brought mana-dampening restraints, the heavy kind, and locked them around his wrists, and four more stayed in a ring around him the whole time. Nobody put a hand on him harder than they had to. O’Shea had clearly given an order, and the order was clean.

[MANA-DAMPENING RESTRAINTS APPLIED]

[MANA ACCESS: SUPPRESSED]

"He’s the murderer," the uncle was shouting, twisting in his cuffs. "You all saw it. Langford’s dead. He killed a royal aide, he killed him on camera—"

"I can give you names," the broker was saying to anyone who would listen, fast, before they even reached the transport. "I can give you the whole chain. I’m a witness. I’m a witness, not a—"

James said nothing.

He let them walk him toward the ramp. The stream had already done what he needed it to do. The world had seen the covered figure, the handoff, the England link, the man who owned Ganner Corp on the floor, and the Paladin who had come to take him. There was nothing left for him to say that the footage had not already said louder.

He was not beaten.

He was contained, and he knew the difference.

♢♢♢♢

By the time the transports cleared the ramp, the story already belonged to everyone else.

The national channels led with the facts and stayed careful.

"—confirmed arrests at the scene, including a senior Ganner Corp figure. The Ashford Grand has suffered a partial structural collapse, and casualties are confirmed. We can also confirm the death of a United Kingdom delegation representative, and an emergency travel freeze now in effect across all Irish ports—"

The English-aligned outlets did not stay careful.

"—an Irish necromancer has killed a royal aide live on a public stream. We are calling it what it is. This is the murder of a Crown representative on foreign soil—"

The Tower analysts argued the combat.

"—watch the sequence again. The delegate activates Paladin combat arts first. He manifests full armament. Whatever else is true, the boy did not start that exchange, and he was already named as the target of an extraction. You cannot ignore that and call this an ambush—"

The comment sections tore in half.

@dublin_mam_of_3: they took his MOTHER. what was he supposed to do

@CrownAndCountry: He raised human corpses on a live feed. A building fell. People died. Monster.

@towerclips: langford pulled a holy SWORD first. rewatch it. nobody talks about that

@just_here_lurking: everyone in that car park was a criminal except the people upstairs who died. that’s the part i can’t stop thinking about

The headlines rewrote themselves every few minutes as more clips spread.

At the Bureau, the board meeting started in chaos.

"He executed a royal aide." One of the members was on his feet before the door had closed. "He could have restrained the man. He had two summons and that — that weapon. He chose to kill him. On a stream. For the whole world."