Chapter 654 - 653: We Chose to Do Nothing

Chapter 654: Chapter 653: We Chose to Do Nothing

Alicia’s question left the room silent.

Until now, none of them had given much thought to whether Amara’s threads could actually be wrong.

If Amara said someone’s thread disappearing meant they were going to die, then that was what they accepted. She was the one with the ability. She was the one who could see the threads, and until now, none of them had ever been given a reason to question what she saw.

Now they did.

Amara wasn’t a god. She wasn’t some freak of nature like Noah, whose abilities seemed capable of ignoring rules everyone else was forced to follow. Her threads were still the result of an ability, and for the first time, several of them began to question whether seeing someone’s fate was really the same as deciding what that fate had to be.

Because Bailey might’ve been the one whose thread disappeared this time, but what happened if it was one of theirs next?

If Amara looked at one of them someday and told them they were going to die, were they simply supposed to accept it?

Should they?

That was what Alicia couldn’t understand about the way Paul was speaking.

Even if Bailey was fated to die, Paul seemed willing to accept that there was nothing they could’ve done to prevent it. Knowing beforehand wouldn’t have mattered, because whatever was supposed to happen would eventually find another way to happen.

All because of an ability.

Some of the anger remained on Alicia’s face, but she didn’t immediately respond.

That uncertainty was exactly what Paul had been trying to make them understand.

He wasn’t claiming that Amara’s threads were absolute. He didn’t know whether seeing someone’s fate meant that fate could no longer be changed, and he certainly didn’t believe they should simply accept that one of them was going to die because an ability told them it would happen.

If Amara had seen his thread disappear, Paul would’ve wanted to fight against it too.

But that wasn’t the same as knowing he could.

"If Amara told us... We would’ve tried to stop it. I would’ve tried."

There was no question about that. If he had known Bailey was going to die soon, he would’ve done everything he could to keep it from happening, regardless of what Amara’s ability had decided.

His gaze lowered for a moment.

"But would we have stopped fate just because we wanted to?"

Jasmine shook her head, frowning in the process. "We don’t know that we couldn’t have."

"No. We don’t."

Paul looked toward her.

"And that’s my point."

For the first time since the argument began, some of Jasmine’s anger gave way to confusion.

Paul wasn’t trying to convince them that Amara had unquestionably made the right decision. A part of him wished she had told them. If he had known, Bailey probably wouldn’t have been able to disappear without him noticing.

But wishing he had been given the chance to try wasn’t the same as believing that chance would’ve been enough.

"We could’ve done more," Jasmine continued. "Bailey wouldn’t be missing right now without any of us knowing where she went."

"You’re right." This time, Paul didn’t argue.

His agreement took some of the anger out of Jasmine’s expression.

"We could’ve noticed sooner. Maybe we could’ve stopped her from leaving today... But what if today wasn’t the day?"

Jasmine’s expression slowly changed. That was the part none of them could answer.

That was the uncertainty Paul couldn’t ignore.

Stopping Bailey from leaving today might’ve saved her life. Or it might’ve only changed when she died. None of them knew enough about Amara’s ability to say which was true, and Paul couldn’t pretend otherwise simply because he desperately wanted one of those possibilities to be the answer.

Amara remained quiet as the argument continued around her. She was accustomed to people questioning her gift, accusing her after hearing something they didn’t want to accept, but she hadn’t expected Paul to be the person defending her.

If anything, she had expected the opposite.

What Amara didn’t understand was that Paul had already been seeing the signs long before this moment.

Bailey had become increasingly consumed with finding a reason to blame Noah for everything that had happened around her. Paul noticed it whenever Noah was brought up, and even more whenever the conversation had anything to do with his own situation.

That was the part Paul understood better than anyone.

Bailey wanted to help him.

She blamed Noah for what happened to him, and no matter how many times Paul tried showing her that he was fine, that he wasn’t falling apart because of what he had become, it never seemed to change how she felt.

That was why Paul tried to be there for her more.

He continued growing stronger, hoping that eventually Bailey would see that he wasn’t going anywhere. That there was nothing she needed to fix for him, and certainly nothing she needed to risk herself trying to change.

But the stronger he became, the more desperate Bailey seemed to become.

Instead of seeing his growth as proof that he was going to be fine, Bailey only seemed to see someone gradually becoming something she could no longer recognize.

And the more Paul tried to convince her that she didn’t need to save him, the more determined she became to find some way to do exactly that.

Paul had known for some time that this couldn’t continue forever.

Sooner or later, Bailey was going to act on everything she had been holding onto. He had hoped he could prevent that by being there for her and gradually taking away the reasons she kept giving herself to hate Noah.

But hearing that she was missing hadn’t surprised him as much as it should have.

Even when Alicia first asked where Bailey was, Paul had felt something he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge. That feeling only grew stronger after hearing the different explanations surrounding where she might’ve gone, and by the time no one could remember seeing her since the expedition departed, his heart had already started accepting what his mind was still trying to deny.

Bailey had finally done something.

Paul never knew what Bailey intended to do about Noah.

He didn’t know when she would finally act on everything she had been holding onto, or what she believed she could actually accomplish when she did.

But Paul knew Bailey well enough to understand that eventually, she was going to do something she couldn’t take back.

And whatever that decision was, it would involve the very person they should’ve learned by now wasn’t someone they could afford to mess with.

That’s why hearing Amara explain what happened to Bailey’s thread bothered Paul far more than he let himself show.

Bailey was missing on the same day an army was marching toward Noah’s home.

Paul didn’t know if the two were connected.

But he was becoming increasingly afraid that whatever Bailey had finally decided to do would place her directly in Noah’s path.

By this point, Paul was no longer sitting. His fingers curled tight enough for his knuckles to crack, creating the illusion of stones breaking against one another.

Deep down, he was frustrated with himself just as much as he was with everyone else, and after listening to them go back and forth, he could no longer contain it.

"We are all cowards in the end..."

The anger in his voice caused several of them to look toward him differently. When Paul met their gazes again, his eyes were clearer than they had been throughout the entire discussion.

"We blame her for telling us..." He paused, glancing toward Amara before looking back at the others. "Then we say that her ability isn’t to be trusted."

For a moment, no one seemed to know how to respond.

The contradiction was too glaring to gloss over. They had blamed Amara for keeping what she knew to herself because knowing might’ve given them the chance to save Bailey, yet now they were questioning whether what she saw should’ve been accepted in the first place.

If they didn’t believe Amara’s ability was enough to determine that Bailey’s death couldn’t be changed, then how could they condemn her for not treating it as though it was?

Some of the anger directed toward Amara gradually began to fade as the others were forced to consider that.

Paul noticed it as well.

But he wasn’t finished.

"Are we really blaming her?"

The frustration building within him subconsciously triggered part of his transformation, causing fur to grow over his knuckles and his eyes to give off a dangerous air.

"Or are we lashing out at her because we also chose not to do anything?"

Whatever understanding had begun to form disappeared almost immediately.

Jasmine’s brow furrowed as Paul’s words began to feel less like an argument and more like an accusation. "What do you mean we chose not to do anything?"

Alicia reacted even more strongly.

"How is any of this our fault?"

The anger in her voice immediately caused the tension around the room to rise again, and she wasn’t the only one who took Paul’s words personally.

Even Raven found herself glaring in his direction.

She had been one of the few people who spoke with Bailey that morning, and no one needed to remind her of that. Ever since they realized Bailey was missing, Raven had already been going back over their conversation on her own, wondering if there had been something she overlooked.

Hearing Paul suggest that they had all chosen to do nothing only made those thoughts considerably harder to ignore.

Levi, on the other hand, seemed to be one of the few people in the room whose mood was actually improving.

He had remained mostly silent while everyone argued over Amara’s decision, watching the blame shift from one person to another with an interest he made very little effort to hide.

This was exactly the sort of thing he expected to happen once the hero was no longer around to hold everyone together.

Caring about one another had never been enough to make them function as a group. Someone still had to make the decisions when everyone disagreed, and someone had to be willing to accept the resentment that came with those decisions afterward.

Without that person, Levi had always wondered how long it would take before they started turning on one another.

Apparently, he finally had his answer.

"Guys! I don’t think he meant it that wa—"

Ishii had wanted no part in the argument from the beginning, but even he could tell how quickly things were getting worse. He tried to intervene before someone said something that couldn’t be taken back, only for Paul to turn toward him before he could finish.

"I MEANT EXACTLY WHAT I SAID!"