Jude trembled as they sat beside each other quietly, bare from the waist up, their feet submerged in the spring.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jude asked into the quiet.

Anton hung his head, his hands clenched in his lap. “Because if you found out, then you would have to make a choice.”

Jude stared at him, anger and disbelief climbing up his throat. “So you made one for me?”

“I—”

“You shouldn’t have kept this from me. I deserved to know. I deserved to—It’s my choice, Anton. Not yours.”

“I know it’s selfish,” Anton said. “I know it is, but I can’t lose you, Jude.”

Jude opened his mouth, but no words would come. So instead he stood up swiftly, even as his legs felt like they might collapse from under him. “I need—I need a minute.”

Anton didn’t try to follow him as Jude stumbled away from the springs, out toward the stark, alien land that lay beyond.

The Order, the Prophets, his destiny—all of it, all of it, was a lie. The Keeper of the Word wasn’t destined to protect the Prophet.

He was destined to die.

The Prophets had made him for this. This sacrifice, this destiny, was the only reason Jude Weatherbourne existed to begin with.

This was it. The way to stop the god, to stop the Age of Darkness. It had been in him the whole time, and Jude hadn’t even known.

But he did now, and there was only one thing he could do with this knowledge. Anton had realized it, too—that the moment Jude discovered the truth would be the moment he lost him. Because how could Jude let the world continue to crumble around him when he had the power to stop it? When all it would cost was his life? He couldn’t.

And yet.

He had told Anton, hadn’t he? We’ll find a different way.

That’s why they were here, searching for the Prophets. Anton had dragged them on this quest knowing full well they could fail, that the Witnesses could find them and return Beru to Pallas, that the god could break free, that they could never find the Prophets and spend the end of the world wandering in this bleak, beautiful landscape.

What is one life, Jude thought to himself, weighed against all those who suffered under Pallas’s regime? Against all those who might yet be spared?

The balance could never be in his favor.

And yet.

It was the same scale he had weighed when he’d thought Anton was the one who would have to sacrifice himself. And there, he had found a different answer. Anton’s life was worth more to him than every chance that they might fail.