The woman would be among the first.

He had known this the moment he handed her the coin pouch. The Church didn't lose paladins without consequence, and anyone connected to the scene would be questioned. She had been there. She had seen. And in a city like this, being present was the same as being guilty.

He should have killed her in the alley.

The thought came without emotion, clinical and clear. It would have been cleaner. Safer. One more body among thousands, absorbed into Adaranthe's daily count without investigation or consequence. She would have died quickly, painlessly, and the Church would have had nothing to leverage.

Instead, he had given her money and let her run.

A mistake born from something he didn't have a name for. Not mercy. Mercy implied choice, deliberation, values he no longer claimed.

It had been instinct. Reflex. The residue of what he used to be before Vulmire, before the basement, before Ariya took hold and reshaped him into something that didn't fit the words he'd once lived by.

I knew better.

The thought came as he moved through the streets, retracing yesterday's path. Basic geography remained the same, but the rhythm had changed. People moved faster. Spoke less. Kept their eyes down when white cloaks passed.

I knew what they would do.

He had been a Paladin once. Had stood in rooms where decisions like this were made. Where clerks recorded names and charges while commanders nodded approval. Where doctrine was applied with the same dispassionate efficiency as maintaining equipment or filing reports.

He knew how the Church operated. How it responded to threats. How it made examples.

And he had let her live anyway.

Why?

The question had no good answer. The woman had meant nothing to him. Her survival served no purpose. Her death in that alley would have simplified everything, removed a variable, and eliminated a witness.

The way Hanitz had taught him to think about problems that needed solving.

But he hadn't done it.

He found the alley where it had happened. The blood had been scrubbed away, the body removed, but the space still carried the mark of official attention.

Disturbed dirt where boots had trampled back and forth during the investigation.

He continued past it.

She survived because I let her. She was noticed because I let her. She's condemned because I let her.

The logic was airtight. Undeniable. He had created the problem by deviating from what he knew to be correct.

The Paladin was dead regardless. That part had been necessary. But the woman had been a complication he'd introduced through weakness.

Or something that looked like weakness from the outside.

The woman had run. He'd watched her go, footsteps fading into the city's noise. She would have headed toward safety.

Somewhere familiar where she could bar the door and pretend the night could be survived.

He found the building three streets over.

It was narrow, squeezed between two larger structures, the kind of place where labourers lived when they couldn't afford better. The door was closed. He stopped in front of it and listened.

Nothing.

He knocked once.

No answer.

A woman emerged from the building next door, carrying a basket. She glanced at him, then at the closed door, then back. Her expression was careful.

"She's not there," the woman said.

He waited.

The woman shifted the basket to her other hip. "They came before dawn. Pulled her out. Didn't say why."

"Where did they take her?"

"Church custody. North barracks, probably. That's where they hold people before-" She stopped.

He nodded once.

The woman studied him for a moment longer, then walked away without another word. Her footsteps faded down the street.

While he slept, they had come for her. Pulled her from whatever safety she'd thought she'd found. Dragged her to the barracks to wait for a sentence that had already been decided before questions were even asked.

The former Paladin stood in front of the closed door for another moment, then turned and walked back toward the main avenue. He passed a notice posted at the corner.

The parchment was clean. Official. Sealed with wax that bore the Church's mark. The words were written in a clerk's neat hand, precise and impersonal.

By Order of the Arch-Presbyter

Charge: Consorting with demons and harbouring enemies of the Church

Sentence: Public execution by hanging

Time: Midday bell

Location: Cathedral Square

The woman's name was listed. Her age. Her district. All reduced to administrative detail, documented with the same care as a property deed.

He read it twice, committing the details to memory, then stepped back as two workers moved past to read it themselves. Their faces showed nothing. Just the kind of weary acceptance that came from seeing this play out before.

Consorting with demons. She must of told someone

The charge was predictable. The Church didn't need evidence. She had been in that alley. She had seen red eyes. She had survived when a Paladin died. That was enough.

And he had given them the narrative by letting her live.

The street continued around him. Carts rolled. Voices called. Life adjusted itself around the notice the way water flowed around a stone.

He moved on.

More notices appeared as he walked. Posted at intersections. Shrines. Guard stations. The same words. The same seal. The Church was ensuring everyone knew. The message was for the city. A reminder of what happened when you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. When you survived something you weren't supposed to see.

This is my fault.

He had intervened. She had survived. She had been noticed. The Church had applied its doctrine. Now she would hang.

The logic was perfect. Inevitable. The kind of chain reaction he should have anticipated and prevented by killing her when he had the chance.

So why didn't I?

The question persisted as he walked, unanswered and unanswerable. He had no good reason. No principle he could name that explained why he'd handed her money instead of ending it cleanly.

Only the memory of her standing there, clutching her torn dress, staring at him with eyes that had seen too much and understood too little.

And the brief, unwanted warmth that had settled in his chest when she'd taken the coin pouch and run.

That was the mistake.

He had wanted it. And know she will hang.

The morning bells rang across the city, marking the hour.

He looked up at the position of the sun. Not midday yet. Still hours away.

The crowds were already beginning to shift, adjusting their movements in anticipation of what would happen in Cathedral Square. The execution would become part of the day's rhythm.

The former Paladin turned toward the east barracks.

Not toward the square. Not yet.

Toward where they would be holding her until the appointed time.

This is what happens when you hesitate.

She will not die.

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