Chapter 26: Cost
The silence in the hall broke into chaos almost instantly.
Eleanor’s face had gone pale, composure cracking in a way Lucas had only seen once before and that was that fierce, hug in her quarters, except this time there was nowhere private to fall apart, over a hundred pairs of eyes watching her try and fail to hold herself together.
"That’s—" Her voice wavered, she caught it hard, visibly forcing steadiness into words that didn’t want to hold. "That’s not... Jed, are you certain? Visions can be wrong, they can shift, they’re not—"
"I’ve never been wrong," Jed said quietly and something in the simple honesty made the words land even harder. "I’m sorry.... I wish I had better news."
"Okay." Mark’s hand landed on Eleanor’s shoulder, steady in a way that seemed he’d caught the exact moment she was about to totally break. "Okay, Elle, breathe. We’ll figure this out, come on."
Lucas stood frozen through all of it, his own pulse hammering loud enough to drown out most of the noise around him, the word "including him" was still ringing in his ears like something was repeating it over and over.
’Dead.... I die....At the Gateway. In front of everyone I’ve ever managed to keep alive.’
He’d died more times than he could easily count by now — Makara, Avalion, Bora, three small deaths in a horde he’d barely survived and every single one of them had come with the quiet, private comfort of knowing he could try again.
This was different....
This was a prophecy spoken out loud, in front of over hundred people.
’What if this is the one time it doesn’t come back?’
"Lucas." Mark’s voice, closer now, cutting through. "You good?"
"Fine," Lucas managed, though his voice came out thinner than he meant it to. "I’m... I’m fine."
Mark studied him a moment longer, clearly unconvinced before he turned back to Eleanor, still gently steering her by the shoulder toward the hall’s exit. "Come on, Elle. Not here. Let’s get you somewhere you can actually fall apart properly." He said that last part with a bit of humor trying to lighten the mood even if just a little bit
"I’m not going to fall apart," Eleanor said. Although the tremor in her voice proved otherwise.
"Sure," he said. "Sure you won’t."
He led her out, the crowd parting for them in uneasy silence, and Lucas was left standing near the center of the hall with Jed, the weight of dozens of stares he could feel but couldn’t quite bring himself to meet.
"Try to calm yourself," Jed said quietly, before slipping away into the dispersing crowd. "Panic won’t change what I saw.... It rarely does."
Lucas watched him go, jaw tight. The hall around him thinning out slowly as survivors drifted back to their own business, throwing occasional glances his way that he no longer had the composure to meet.
Someone offered him a hand on the shoulder, murmured something meant to be reassuring that didn’t quite register.
He nodded anyway...
Because it seemed easier than explaining that reassurance wasn’t really the problem.
’I’ve died before. Plenty of times. Why does this one feel different?’
He already knew the answer, even as he tried to talk himself out of it. Every death until now had come with a checkpoint waiting behind it, a version of the world that reset the instant his heart stopped his memory intact, another chance already loaded and ready.
This was the first time anyone had ever told him plainly, that a specific death was coming and not told him with the uncertainty of a monster he might still out-plan, but with the flat, unshakeable certainty of a prophet whose visions had never once failed to come true.
’What if this is the one that sticks? What if [Regression] doesn’t bring me back from a death Jed’s already seen happen?’
He didn’t know the answer. He wasn’t sure anyone did.
And that fact alone was enough to make him loose his nerve...
***
The message came less than an hour later.
Ayoung survivor finding Lucas near the edge of the fortress and telling him Eleanor wanted to see him.
Lucas made the walk to her quarters with his own thoughts still spinning too fast to settle into anything coherent.
He knocked once. The door opened almost immediately.
Eleanor looked worse up close than she had in the hall. Eyes reddened, arms wrapped around herself in a way that made her look smaller than the fierce, composed leader Lucas had watched command an entire room a week ago.
"Hey," he said carefully, stepping inside as the door shut behind him. "You okay?"
"No," she said, voice cracking on the single syllable. "No, I’m really not."
She turned away from him, pacing a short, restless stride across the room, hands folding together in front of her.
"There has to be a way around it. A different route, a smaller group, something... I’ve been trying to think of every possible way to change the outcome since the moment he said it, and I keep... I keep coming back to the same thing."
"Eleanor—"
"His visions are never wrong." She stopped pacing, staring at some fixed point on the wall like it might offer an answer. "Never. Not once since he joined this faction. Every single thing he’s told me has happened exactly the way he described it. That’s...that’s why we listen to him in the first place, that’s the entire reason his position matters at all, and now he’s telling me that fifty people die at the Gateway and you’re one of them and I can’t... I don’t know how to just accept that, Lucas, I don’t know how to just stand here knowing I might not be able to do anything no matter how much I try..."
Her voice broke entirely on the last word, and whatever composure she’d been holding onto since the hall finally gave out all at once, a sob almost tearing loose that she clearly hadn’t wanted him to hear.
Lucas crossed the room without thinking and pulled her into his arms.
She resisted for moment before melting into it completely, face pressed against his shoulder, shoulders shaking with the force of everything she’d apparently been suppressing since Jed’s first word in that hall. Lucas held on, one hand against her back, saying nothing at all because there wasn’t anything to say that wouldn’t sound dry against the actual thing of what she was afraid of.
"I just got you back," she said, muffled. Her voice thick with tears she was clearly furious at herself for shedding. "I spent weeks not knowing if you were alive. Now I finally have you here, and I’m supposed to just — watch you walk into something that’s going to—"
"Hey." Lucas pulled back just enough to look at her properly, hands steady on her shoulders. "It hasn’t happened yet."
She scoffed. "That’s not comforting."
"I know." He managed something like smile. "I’m working on it."
She let out a small, broken laugh, swiping angrily at her own eyes like she loathed the tears for existing at all.
"You know," she said eventually, voice still shaking, "I used to think the worst thing that could happen to me in this world was losing you or Mark the first time. Not knowing anything and hoping. I thought if I still had you both, that would take care of the hard part..
"Turns out the universe had other ideas."
"Turns out the universe is a sick bitch," she said, echoing words he’d used with someone else entirely, weeks and a lifetime ago and something about hearing his own old joke handed back to him in the middle of all this ached more than he wanted it to...
Then, gradually, Lucas watched her rebuild herself in front of him— shoulders straightening, jaw setting, the raw grief in her expression folding itself back behind something harder and controlled, piece by piece.
"Okay," she said finally, voice returning to something closer to its usual steadiness, though the redness in her eyes hadn’t fully faded. "Okay. I can’t... I can’t be like this. Not right now....Not in front of you, not in front of anyone."
"Eleanor, it’s okay to—"
"No, it’s not." She stepped back from him, wiping her face vigorously, composure locking back into place like armor she’d forced on herself. "A leader doesn’t fall apart. Not where people can see it. I already showed too much of that in the hall today, and I can’t keep doing it every single person in this Faction is counting on me to be steady, and if they see me like this, if they see their leader crying over one person—"
"You’re allowed to be human, Elle." Lucas said it quietly, watching the careful, deliberate way she was rebuilding a wall he wasn’t sure was healthy for her to keep rebuilding. "You don’t have to be some unstoppable goddess all the time."
"Yes, I do." Something flat and resigned crept into her voice and Lucas recognized it as the kind of tone of someone repeating an argument she’d already had with herself many times before. "That’s what leading actually is. Nobody follows someone who falls apart every time something goes wrong."
Lucas didn’t push further, though something about the certainty in her voice, the ease with which she’d folded genuine grief back into place sat uneasily in his chest, a small, quiet worry he filed away without quite knowing what to do with it yet.
His own life mattered right now...
She moved to the table near the window instead, pulling out a rough map of the terrain between the fortress and the Gateway, tracing possible routes with one finger.
"If we can’t avoid the cost entirely," she said, tone all serious now, "then we minimize it. Different formation. Smaller vanguard. Something that changes the shape of whatever Jed saw, even if it can’t undo it completely."
She looked up at him then, those sharp grey-blue eyes of hers locking on him.
"Which means I need to actually understand what you can do," she said. "Properly... Not the vague version you gave me the other day. What’s your ability, Lucas? Tell me everything..."
Lucas felt his stomach drop, the old familiar warning flashing behind his eyes before she’d even finished the question.
[Player is not allowed to reveal Regression ability. Violation means death.]
"Eleanor—"
"That’s not an answer," she said, cutting him off entirely.
"What’s your ability, Lucas?"
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