She sat in silence for three days.

  We rotated interrogators.

  The questions changed—

  no longer about identity,

  not even loyalty.

  They were tactical now:

  “Where is the Fiendkin capital?”

  “You know the route—don’t you?”

  “Are they reinforcing the eastern line?”

  She didn’t move.

  Not out of defiance—

  but as if she simply… didn’t want to hear any.

  She spoke as if to air.

  Like she was frozen in time before we arrived.

  The Church sent a divine adjudicator.

  He carried a Truth Bell and a Heresy Extractor,

  authorized at level three enforcement.

  That was the only time she reacted.

  Not to the bell’s sound.

  Not to the divine-pain incantations.

  But when they asked her:

  “Why won’t you tell us the city’s location?”

  She spoke.

  For the first time.

  “Kill me.”

  Soft.

  But clear.

  After that, she said no more.

  To every question, she gave just two words:

  “Kill me.”

  Each time heavier.

  Each time faster.

  She stopped eating.

  Stopped sleeping.

  Stopped moving.

  She was following a single command—

  a command she’d given herself:

  Say nothing.

  We tried to break her silence.

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  I cleared the guards.

  Sat across from her, alone.

  “You were once our adjutant.

  We want to believe you were misled.”

  She didn’t turn.

  “If you keep silent,” I said,

  “we’ll have to conclude total mutation.”

  She lifted her head.

  Her eyes held more clarity than ever before.

  “...Kill me.”

  I sat in silence for a long time.

  There was no magic in those words.

  No curse.

  No distortion.

  She said it herself.

  She wasn’t afraid to die.

  She was afraid—

  of what would happen if she spoke.

  She treated words like poison.

  Life is like a sentence.

  She was still fighting—by refusing to give us anything.

  The royal directive came.

  “If within three days she reveals no Fiendkin geography, structure, or strategy—

  consider her a failed heretic.

  Final purge to be carried out by the Hero.”

  I received the order myself.

  I felt no surprise.

  No resistance.

  This wasn’t a judgment.

  This was an execution.

  She was no longer her.

  Execution day was clear.

  I stood below the tribunal stage,

  sword in hand—

  the Justice Blade, bestowed by the Crown.

  The blade was clean.

  Its edge is brighter than any ceremonial weapon.

  She was led up steadily.

  No hesitation in her step.

  There was no crowd.

  No public.

  No spectacle.

  This was not a punishment.

  This was a system integrity correction.

  She stopped at the center.

  I approached.

  I raised the blade.

  And she... smiled.

  But I also saw her take one step back.

  The same woman who’d repeated “Kill me” like a mantra—

  Did she fear it now?

  I didn’t understand.

  But I knew—

  The Hero would not waver.

  The Hero would grant her the redemption she refused to ask for.

  The sword fell.

  No blood splashed.

  She left this world quietly—

  as if she’d never been here at all.