Chapter Text
The hall had been built for people who believed stone could make them safe.
You could feel it in the way the ceiling pressed down—high enough to impress a visitor, low enough to remind everyone inside that they were still contained. You could feel it in the long table, polished until it shone like a promise, placed exactly so that neither side would have to stand too near the other. Even the banners were chosen with care: not the oldest, not the bloodiest, not the ones that carried the weight of grudges that still had teeth. These were the acceptable symbols. The kind that said we can cooperate without confessing how frightened they were of what cooperation might cost.
The militia commanders gathered in disciplined clusters, their armor unlatched in all the visible places and fastened in all the important ones. Their hands were bare, but their wrists hovered near weapons out of habit rather than threat. Their faces were open in the way people trained in diplomacy learned to be open—expressive enough to seem human, contained enough to never leak truth. They were not here to challenge. They were not here to bargain from a position of power. They were here because something vast had begun to move in the region, and their maps could not explain it.
They were here to understand the Alliance.
Not a kingdom. Not a militia. Not a single banner with an easy chain of command. Something older and stranger than humans liked to admit existed—multiple entities, multiple lines, multiple moralities bound together by a shared enemy and a shared refusal to let corruption eat the world whole.
At the far end of the chamber stood the two representatives the Alliance had sent into this small, human-shaped room.
One was the Evil Leader.
The title was a human simplification, a label that had survived because it was easy to say and hard to forget. It did not mean he led a bloodline in the way the Bloodline God Leader did. It did not mean he had ever held the position humans would imagine when they heard leader. He was not the highest authority in his lineage. He had never been the final ritual made flesh. That role belonged elsewhere—above, beyond, anchored in a different kind of power that cared about cosmic structure more than personal theatrics.
But the Evil Leader was still a Guardian, and Guardians sat unnaturally high in the food chain of reality. Even when they weren’t “the” leader, their presence came with the shape of command. Even when they weren’t the apex of their own hierarchy, the universe treated them like a blade set across a table: not pointed at anyone, but impossible to ignore.
He stood as if the room were a suggestion. He carried himself with that relaxed precision that made humans uneasy because it looked like arrogance and felt like inevitability. His posture was almost lazy, but the laziness was curated—every angle a choice, every stillness a kind of laughter at the idea that he needed to prove anything. His eyes moved when he wanted them to and nowhere else. His hands rested easily at his sides, and if a human looked too long at his fingers they might have felt, without knowing why, that those hands had held weapons that remembered names.
Beside him stood the Archer.
Not a Guardian.
Not a leader.
Not any of the titles the humans would have recognized as “important,” and yet important in the way a fallen commander still carried gravity even after the army was ash. His faction had crumbled. That was the true context of his silence: he came from something that had once had rules and hierarchy and a future, and now all that remained was the discipline drilled into his bones before he had learned how to soften his voice.
He stood straight, hands folded behind his back, shoulders squared like a habit that had turned into armor. His face was calm in the way soldiers learned to be calm: calm as a barricade, calm as a blade held steady, calm as a child who had been told that emotions were something you earned after the mission was done. The humans read him as tense, as severe, as angry. They always did. They mistook his careful restraint for hostility because they did not know how many different kinds of tension existed.
He did not look at the commanders. He looked through them, slightly past them, as if mapping the room by instinct: exits, angles, distances, the subtle shifts of breath that could mean fear or sudden decision. It was not a threat. It was training.
It was also discomfort—the specific discomfort of being watched by people who did not understand what they were looking at, and wanting very badly to remain comprehensible anyway.
A senior commander stepped forward. He was older than most of the others, with silver at the temples and the kind of steady gaze that said he’d seen enough battles to prefer none at all. He inclined his head, a gesture that tried to split the difference between respect and equality.
“Thank you for meeting with us,” he began, voice formal but not cold. “We understand that your Alliance is coordinating with Palisade and other groups to resist the corruption that’s been spreading across the region. We want to know what collaboration looks like. What support you can offer. What support you require. How we can coexist without stepping on each other’s operations.”
The Evil Leader smiled immediately, as if the word coexist had amused him.
The Archer did not move.
The commander continued, careful. “We’re not here to threaten you. We’re here to understand how your… efforts integrate with ours. Our people have seen your fighters in the field. They’ve seen the damage you can do. They’ve also seen the way you’ve extracted civilians from zones we couldn’t safely enter. We need to establish a framework.”
Framework. The human obsession with fences and lists. The Archer’s mouth tightened almost imperceptibly at the word, the way it always did when someone tried to box chaos into paper.
Evil Leader—of course—noticed.
He leaned just slightly toward the Archer, as if sharing the moment the way one might share a private joke. Then he spoke, not in the common tongue, not in anything a human ear could parse.
A string of syllables that didn’t sound like threat or prayer, but like something sharp and intimate—language built for entities who could hold meaning in the shape of sound itself.
You’re thinking in angles again. Try not to look like you want to kill their table.
The Archer’s breath caught.
Not because of the content—he’d heard worse, from the Evil Leader and from his own memories—but because of the fact of it. The Evil Leader had spoken in the entities’ tongue fluently enough to be casual. Fluently enough to make it clear this wasn’t a party trick. He’d been learning. Listening. Catching the shape of the Archer’s silences and translating them into something he could speak back.
They won’t know, the Evil Leader’s eyes seemed to say, gleaming with the satisfaction of private knowledge. But you will.
The Archer didn’t answer in that language. He couldn’t, not quickly, not with humans watching. But his fingers flexed behind his back in a way only another entity would read as a response: Stop.
The Evil Leader’s smile widened, as if Stop were the funniest thing he’d ever been told.
He turned his attention to the commanders, face open, voice smooth.
“Framework,” he repeated, tasting the word like wine. “You want to know how we fit into your careful little systems.”
A murmur rippled through the militia—some offended, some amused, most uncertain whether this was hostility or simply… scale.
The senior commander held his ground. “We want to avoid misunderstanding.”
“Oh, misunderstandings are inevitable,” the Evil Leader replied lightly. “But you can certainly try to reduce the more expensive ones.”
One of the younger officers, braver than wise, asked, “Are you saying you can’t be controlled?”
The Archer’s jaw tightened. He could already feel the meeting sliding toward the kind of stupidity that got humans killed.
The Evil Leader’s eyes flicked to the officer, bright with amusement rather than menace. “Controlled?” he echoed, almost delighted. “No. But I can be negotiated with. Those are different.”
“And what determines whether you cooperate?” the officer pushed.
The Evil Leader’s smile sharpened. “It depends on how bored I am.”
That line landed exactly as it was meant to: half joke, half warning, full reminder that their guest list included beings who did not need their approval.
The commander’s lips thinned, but he didn’t rise to it. “Then we’ll endeavor to keep this from boring you.”
“Good,” the Evil Leader said, as if awarding a point.
The Archer remained silent, posture rigid, expression neutral, and the humans misread it again—saw only tension, assumed hostility, assumed disdain. They did not see the truth: he was holding the meeting together by refusing to let his face reveal how hard he was concentrating on not reacting. Every time the Evil Leader spoke, it was like being tapped on a bruise you didn’t know you had.
The senior commander gestured toward the table, inviting them closer. “We’d like to discuss the Alliance’s operations. Palisade has informed us that your fighters have been engaging corruption clusters beyond our reach. We need coordination points. Communication channels. A method to distinguish your people from hostile entities.”
The Evil Leader stepped forward with the unhurried grace of someone indulging a ritual. He did not sit. He placed one hand on the table’s edge as if testing the craftsmanship, then looked up at the commander.
“We fight,” he said simply. “We heal what can be healed. We retrieve what can be retrieved. We close breaches when possible. We contain what cannot be closed.”
“And in exchange?” the commander asked.
The Evil Leader blinked. “Exchange?”
“We assume you’re not doing this for free,” the younger officer muttered.
The Archer’s eyes flicked toward the officer, a glance sharp enough to cut. The humans saw anger. In truth it was exhaustion: the exhaustion of explaining to people who thought all power needed a price tag.
The Evil Leader—because he could not resist—tilted his head and spoke again in the entities’ tongue, just loud enough that the Archer heard and no one else could decode.
They think we’re merchants.
The Archer’s throat tightened. He didn’t answer, but something in his silence shifted—something that made the Evil Leader’s smile soften for a fraction of a second before he masked it with amusement again.
Aloud, the Evil Leader said, “We aren’t here to trade favors like coins. We’re here because corruption doesn’t stop at borders. If we leave it, it eats everything. Including you. Including your children. Including whatever prayers you’re telling yourselves make you special.”
The room went quiet.
Some of the commanders shifted, uncomfortable at the bluntness.
The senior commander nodded slowly, accepting the truth even if he didn’t like the tone. “Then let’s speak plainly. What does collaboration require?”
This was where the Archer should have spoken. This was his terrain—strategy, clarity, the clean language of operations. This was what he had been trained for: to take chaos and make it navigable.
He tried.
He opened his mouth—and the Evil Leader cut in.
“Less talking,” he said, bright as sunlight on a blade. “More competence.”
The Archer’s jaw snapped shut.
The Evil Leader glanced sideways at him, eyes glittering with that calculated chaos that wasn’t random at all, that existed precisely to cover the places where he was most at risk of losing control. The teasing was his curtain. His disguise. His way of making everything a joke so nothing could see the edges of what was real.
And he teased the Archer constantly.
Because the Archer reacted like a weapon that wanted to be a person.
Because the Archer’s seriousness was easy to poke.
Because the Evil Leader liked watching him fracture and recover, liked watching how disciplined he was, liked—whether he admitted it or not—how safe the Archer’s predictability felt against his own chaotic core.
The senior commander tried to pull the conversation back. “Palisade mentioned support units. Not just fighters.”
The Evil Leader nodded lazily. “Yes. We bring more than blades.”
“We bring medics,” the Archer said finally, voice controlled, precise. His words landed like a report. “We bring scouts who can move through corrupted terrain without triggering it. We bring entities who can seal minor breaches with ritual, not explosives. We bring stabilizers who can keep combatants from burning out.”
The Evil Leader’s smile widened as if pleased the Archer had spoken at all.
“And we bring,” the Evil Leader added, “a great deal of patience.”
The Archer’s eyes flicked toward him.
The Evil Leader leaned in slightly, almost imperceptibly, and murmured in the entities’ tongue again—too quick for humans, intimate as breath.
You sound beautiful when you give orders.
The Archer’s spine stiffened.
Heat rose under his skin, immediate and unwanted.
He kept his face neutral.
The commander misread it as hostility and hurriedly continued, “We also need to understand your hierarchy. Who makes decisions? Who do we contact?”
The Evil Leader’s smile sharpened. “Not me.”
That startled some of them, because humans heard “Evil Leader” and assumed it meant top of the chain. They didn’t understand that titles sometimes described reputation rather than authority.
The senior commander frowned. “Then who?”
“The Bloodline God Leader makes decisions that concern bloodline structure,” the Evil Leader said casually, as if discussing weather. “Other leaders and groups handle other domains. I’m… a blade you point in a direction and hope you don’t regret it.”
“That is not reassuring,” someone muttered.
“It wasn’t meant to be,” the Evil Leader replied pleasantly.
The Archer’s hands tightened behind his back.
The teasing continued, woven between every sentence, every attempt at seriousness.
When the commander asked about supply routes, the Evil Leader remarked, “You want us to carry your food as well? How domesticated.”
When they asked about safe zones, he said, “Safe is relative. You’re safe compared to the corruption. Compared to me, you’re… adorable.”
When they asked about communication, he sighed dramatically and said, “Do you have something better than runners and prayers? Because I refuse to learn how your little lightning boxes work.”
The Archer corrected him quietly: “They’re radios.”
The Evil Leader’s eyes glittered. “Lightning boxes,” he repeated, stubbornly. Then, softer, in the entities’ tongue: Say ‘radios’ again. It sounded like you were scolding me.
The Archer’s face remained unreadable, but inside him something twisted—annoyance, yes, but also a discomfort he couldn’t name. Because the Evil Leader’s comments were constant, and because they were not random. They were aimed. They always found the places the Archer tried hardest to hide.
And beneath the teasing, the Evil Leader was watching.
Watching for signs the Archer would break.
Watching for signs the Archer would leave.
Watching, too, for signs that the Archer cared.
The Archer kept telling himself it was nothing. That the teasing was a tactic. That Evil Leader used humor like armor. That the comments meant nothing because the Evil Leader never meant anything.
But that was the lie.
Evil Leader meant things all the time. He just rarely allowed anyone to see it.
And the Archer—who had been trained to read movement and intent like scripture—kept catching glimpses of seriousness under the jokes. Fleeting. Dangerous. Like seeing a star through clouds and realizing the sky was deeper than you thought.
It made him angry.
It made him nervous.
It made him feel, in the worst way, that he was losing control.
The meeting dragged on, humans asking for specifics, trying to make sense of the Alliance without flattening it into something familiar. They spoke of corruption clusters, of villages evacuated, of supply lines disrupted. They asked for schedules and contact points, for signs and codes, for ways to know whether an entity on the road was an ally or threat.
The Archer answered the questions that required clarity. He did it efficiently, voice calm, posture steady, offering structure without promising more than was real.
The Evil Leader interrupted constantly.
Sometimes with jokes. Sometimes with sharp corrections. Sometimes with offhand comments designed to remind the humans that they were not hosting equals—they were hosting forces that could ignore their walls if they wished.
And sometimes, always, with the Archer.
“Try smiling,” he said once, in common, while a commander spoke about civilian protection. “They’ll trust you more.”
“I don’t need their trust,” the Archer said.
“Oh, you do,” the Evil Leader replied sweetly. “You just don’t like needing anything.”
The Archer’s gaze sharpened. “Stop.”
The Evil Leader’s eyes gleamed. “Stop what?”
“This.”
The Evil Leader leaned slightly closer, voice soft enough not to carry. “Make me.”
It was still teasing. Still a game.
Except the Archer felt, for the first time, the edge beneath it—the possibility that the Evil Leader wasn’t just trying to provoke him. That he was trying to see whether the Archer would act.
The Archer hated that thought.
Hated that he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The senior commander, trying desperately to keep the meeting from sliding into something mythic and unmanageable, said, “We’ve been told some entities form bonds. Agreements beyond contract. Is that relevant to your Alliance’s cohesion?”
The Archer’s chest tightened.
The Evil Leader’s smile didn’t change, but his eyes did—just slightly, as if the question had brushed something sensitive.
“Some bonds exist,” the Evil Leader said carefully, tone light enough to pass as dismissive. “They aren’t your concern.”
The Archer kept his face blank, but inside him the word bond rang like a bell.
He had been circling this concept for months without admitting it. He had seen bonds among entities, seen the way two beings could align so deeply their presence became a single shape. He knew what it meant. He knew the stakes. He knew the way it could be equivalent to marriage in cultures humans never learned existed.
And he had been terrified of it.
Because bonds were surrender.
Because bonds were permanence.
Because bonds required choice—and the Archer had lived too long in a world where choice was something you only got after you’d paid in blood.
He looked at the Evil Leader—at the careless posture, the sharp smile, the constant teasing—and he thought, with sudden clarity, He will never be serious unless I make him.
The thought was ridiculous.
The thought was desperate.
The thought, worst of all, felt like strategy.
The senior commander continued, “We’re asking because if bonding affects operations—”
“It doesn’t,” the Evil Leader cut in quickly, too quick. “Not here. Not now.”
The Archer felt something in his chest twist.
Seriousness. That was seriousness. Brief and unmasked.
The Evil Leader noticed the Archer noticing.
His smile returned, too bright. Too fast.
Calculated chaos sliding back into place.
He spoke in the entities’ tongue again, casual as breath.
Don’t look at me like that. They’ll think you’re planning to kill me.
The Archer’s hands clenched behind his back.
His pulse thundered.
He did not know what he was about to do until he did it.
He stepped forward, into the Evil Leader’s space, not as an attack, not as violence, but as interruption. A commander’s interruption. A soldier’s correction. His fingers closed around the Evil Leader’s forearm—firm, decisive, not painful.
Humans reacted instantly: gasps, a half-step backward, a hand twitching toward a weapon.
The senior commander barked, “Stand down—”
The Archer did not hear him.
The Archer spoke in the entities’ tongue, voice low, urgent, the words shaped by instinct rather than planning.
Work with me.
It was meant to be command.
It was meant to be a strategy.
A way to force seriousness into the moment. A way to stop the teasing. A way to anchor the Evil Leader in something real, something operational, something that could be spoken in front of humans without revealing the deeper truth the Archer was terrified of admitting: that he wanted the Evil Leader to stop acting like nothing mattered because the Archer had begun to suspect something did.
The Evil Leader froze.
For a heartbeat, his smile vanished.
And in that heartbeat, the Archer saw it: the openness that had been waiting behind the jokes. The willingness that had been there before the Archer had even realized he was falling.
The Evil Leader’s eyes dropped briefly to the Archer’s hand on his arm.
Then lifted.
And he answered in the same language, voice quiet, suddenly steady.
Yes.
The bond ignited.
Not because the Archer had meant to ask for it.
Not because the Evil Leader had coerced it.
Because the words work with me—spoken in that tongue, spoken with that grip, spoken with that desperate sincerity—carried more weight than the Archer understood. The language of entities did not merely translate intention. It amplified it. It exposed the deeper layer beneath the conscious thought.
And beneath the Archer’s conscious command was something raw and ancient:
Be with me.
The room slowed as if reality itself had inhaled.
Sound dulled. The scrape of boots against stone softened into nothing. The banners seemed to hang motionless, air thickening with pressure that humans could feel but not name. Dust suspended in the shafts of light like stars caught mid-fall.
The Archer’s chest burned as if a second heart had been pressed against his own from the inside.
Pain flared—sharp, intimate, like a blade cutting open old scar tissue.
Then warmth flooded in, threading through that pain, turning it into something else: alignment. Recognition. A pulse not his own beating alongside him, steady and undeniable.
The Evil Leader inhaled sharply, and for the first time the Archer saw him without the chaos-mask. Saw him startled. Saw him chosen.
The Evil Leader’s power shifted—not exploding, not lashing out, but rearranging, as if his internal storm had suddenly found a coastline. Chaos became shaped. Calculated chaos, yes, still present, but now anchored to something that wasn’t boredom or provocation.
The Evil Leader whispered, in the entities’ tongue, so softly it was almost a thought:
You meant it.
The Archer’s throat tightened.
He hadn’t.
He had.
He didn’t know.
That was the horror and the miracle: the bond didn’t care about the Archer’s denial. It cared about what was true beneath it.
The Evil Leader’s eyes shone—not with mockery, not with menace, but with something that looked frighteningly like reverence.
He said, again, quieter:
I accept.
The Archer released him as if burned.
Time snapped back into motion all at once.
The humans erupted.
“What in the—”
“Was that an attack?”
“Did he just—”
“Stand down!”
The senior commander’s voice cut through, sharp as a whip: “Weapons stay down. Nobody moves.”
The Archer stepped back, posture rigid, face unreadable, and the humans—of course—interpreted it as anger. They didn’t see the truth: he was holding himself together by refusing to breathe too deeply, because every breath made the bond pulse, made the new presence in his chest undeniable.
The Evil Leader straightened slowly.
For a moment, his movements were almost mechanical, as if he needed to re-inhabit his own body. His gaze was distant, focused inward, checking the bond like one checks a wound.
Then the mask slid back into place.
But it fit differently now.
His smile returned, yes—but it no longer felt like a blade. It felt like a curtain drawn over something bright.
He turned to the commanders with smooth calm, as if nothing extraordinary had happened.
“My apologies,” he said lightly. “Entity communication.”
One of the younger officers snapped, “You can’t just—”
“I can,” the Evil Leader replied pleasantly. “But I won’t, again, if it makes you all twitchy.”
The senior commander stared at him, trying to calculate what had just occurred. “Was anyone harmed?”
The Evil Leader’s eyes flicked briefly to the Archer—so quick a human would miss it, but the Archer felt it like touch.
“No,” the Evil Leader said. “No harm.”
The commander’s gaze shifted to the Archer. “And you?”
The Archer did not answer.
His silence was not defiance. It was survival. If he opened his mouth, something might fall out that he couldn’t put back.
The Evil Leader stepped neatly into the gap, the way a practiced negotiator did when their partner went quiet.
“As we were saying,” he continued smoothly, voice warm enough to soothe the room back into function, “we are coordinating with Palisade and other groups. Palisade provides structure. Logistics. A base of operations. They also provide—how do you phrase it?—a place for people to exist without constantly being hunted by whatever cosmic horror is trending this season.”
A few of the commanders blinked, unsure whether to laugh.
The Evil Leader smiled as if that uncertainty amused him, then continued before anyone could get stuck on the tone.
“Our Alliance brings fighters, yes,” he said, and his voice was suddenly more serious. “But we also bring progress. Support. Stabilizers who can keep your soldiers from burning their minds out when they stare too long at corruption they weren’t built to understand. Healers who can treat wounds that aren’t just flesh. Scouts who can map corrupted zones without waking what sleeps inside them. Ritualists who can seal cracks before they become mouths.”
The senior commander listened carefully, grateful for the return to concrete details.
“And what do you require from us?” he asked.
The Evil Leader’s smile softened, almost human. “Don’t shoot our people when you see them. Don’t interfere with containment zones unless you’re invited. And if you see a breach open that smells like burning metal and wrongness, don’t be brave about it. Send word. Get out.”
One commander frowned. “That’s not very reassuring.”
“It’s realistic,” the Evil Leader replied. “Reassurance is something humans buy when they can afford lies. This isn’t that kind of situation.”
The meeting resumed its rhythm, but the air had changed.
Something had happened that the humans couldn’t name, but they could feel the aftertaste of it: a pressure easing, a tension in the room shifting toward something quieter and deeper. The Evil Leader handled the rest of the discussion with practiced ease, alternating between blunt truths and small jokes, giving the militia just enough structure to cling to without pretending they were equal partners in scale.
He gave them contact methods—runners to Palisade, signal fires in specific patterns, codes simple enough for humans to use without error. He agreed to joint patrols near civilian zones. He set boundaries: no humans inside active corruption clusters unless escorted. He offered training sessions—basic survival guidance for what corruption did to the mind, how to recognize early symptoms, how to retreat without shame.
All the while, the Archer stood silent.
He did not speak again.
His mind was too loud.
The bond pulsed in his chest like a second heartbeat. Each time the Evil Leader spoke, the Archer could feel it—words vibrating through the connection in a way that wasn’t telepathy, not exactly, but resonance. The Evil Leader’s seriousness, when it surfaced beneath the jokes, no longer felt like a rare accident. It felt like something the Archer had been invited into.
He kept remembering the moment—the grip, the words work with me, the unintended depth beneath them. He kept replaying the Evil Leader’s expression when he’d accepted. Surprise. Yes. But also… relief. As if he’d been waiting for permission. As if he’d been holding himself open while pretending to be closed.
The Archer’s throat tightened.
He did not know what it meant.
He knew exactly what it meant.
He thought of his crumbled faction, of the way bonds had once been treated as sacred, rare, dangerous. He thought of the brother he had killed—the one whose soul he planned to later summon for guidance because he could not trust his own mind to interpret this without breaking.
He thought of how the Evil Leader had teased him relentlessly, and how the teasing now felt like a thread connecting backward through time: not cruelty, not boredom, but testing. Learning. Watching for cracks. Watching for willingness.
Evil Leader concluded the meeting with a smooth finality that left the humans feeling like they’d survived a storm without quite understanding how.
“We’ll coordinate through Palisade,” he said, and his voice was calm, almost gentle. “Your region matters. Your people matter. The corruption doesn’t care about your politics, so we’ll have to care enough for it to make a difference. That’s the agreement.”
The senior commander nodded, relief visible in the softening of his shoulders. “We appreciate your cooperation.”
The Evil Leader smiled. “Try not to make it boring, and we’ll get along fine.”
A few humans laughed, grateful for the familiar edge, grateful for something they could label as humor instead of prophecy.
The Evil Leader inclined his head, a gesture that could be read as respect if one wanted to believe in it.
Then he turned slightly—just enough that his eyes caught the Archer’s.
For a fraction of a second, the teasing mask did not return.
His expression was serious.
Not solemn. Not cold.
Serious in the way a hand is serious when it reaches for another hand and doesn’t let go.
He spoke in the entities’ tongue, so softly the Archer felt the words more than heard them:
Later.
The Archer’s breath caught.
He did not respond.
He could not.
He followed the Evil Leader out of the hall because that was what his body did when it didn’t know what else to do: it obeyed momentum. Behind them, the militia commanders began speaking quickly to each other, trying to process, trying to translate the impossible into notes they could file and plans they could enact.
The Archer heard none of it.
All he heard was the bond.
Not words.
A presence.
A new gravity in his chest.
He walked in silence down the corridor, past torches and stone and the faint smell of rain outside, and every step felt like it carried him deeper into something he had not meant to enter.
He had asked for seriousness.
He had triggered bonding.
He had thought he was forcing cooperation.
He had offered togetherness.
And the Evil Leader—who had always joked, always teased, always pretended nothing mattered—had accepted as if it had been inevitable.
The Archer did not know whether to be furious or relieved.
He did not know whether he had made a mistake or found the only thing that had ever felt like choice.
His face remained calm because that was what he had been trained to do. Commander posture. Soldier stillness. Discipline like a cage.
Inside, his thoughts spiraled, sharp and relentless.
Work with me.
Be with me.
He meant it.
He walked beside the Evil Leader, silent as a shadow, and wondered what it would mean to speak again—what language he could use now that the one language that mattered had already betrayed him.
And in the space between heartbeats, where the bond pulsed steady and real, the Archer realized the most terrifying part:
He wasn’t only surprised that the Evil Leader was serious.
He was surprised at how quickly his own fear had turned into something dangerously close to hope.