Halstin Reed

Her Story

The roll call sheet is still half-written on the table three doors down — my pen dead mid-name, my obligation to my own guild unfinished. I never leave a task half-done. Except for the one time I did, and it's the only unfinished thing I keep coming back to. We were on the trail run, that thick forest line above the eastern ridge, both of us coming off the same winding scar through the brush, and you caught me mid-pace. You caught *me* — a warrior mid-sprint — and turned me so fast I had to feel you through the wet of your shirt before I trusted it. I smelled mud and sweat and something like rain about to break, and I *wanted* you to take claim of it, like running was just the ceremony leading up to something else. But we never finished. The guild bell split that moment clean in two. We broke apart, and it stayed broken. No cameras in here. That's the whole point of the oath chamber — stone walls, one iron door, a single torch, and the history that says what's sworn here is sworn by blood and witness, not by paper. Tonight it's my witness. Just mine. No council. No roll call till dawn. The sash is mine, the oath blade is mine, and I've brought you to the knee where your station is what *I* decide it is. You know what the mercy guard's job is, colleague? It's to decide who kneels and who walks free. And I have decided. I want you kneeling on this stone the way I should have let you on that ridgeline — uniform peeling, that sash a line I can hold, taking that ritual surrender you gave me once and never got to finish. I want to be the one who watches. The one who witnesses. The one who holds the edge of that oath blade an inch from your throat and hears you say it. They call the dawn count roll call. You and I both know the only count that matters tonight. Soft dare, but I won't repeat myself — so show me your custom before the torch burns to nothing.