Part Seventy-Four — Those Who Wouldn’t Fight

　Senna found the dwarves first — a small, exhausted column of them, walking the same stretch of forest floor over and over without seeming to notice the repetition, the specific glassy persistence of people who'd stopped questioning why the trees never changed.

Another group caught in the loop. Same as Eris, all those years ago. Same as anyone who wanders in without permission.

　She approached carefully, hands visible, the way she'd learned to greet frightened strangers since Kai had given her that name and, with it, a purpose she still hadn't fully grown used to wearing.

　"You're walking in circles," she told them, gentle. "Have been for some time, I'd guess. This land doesn't let anyone through without permission — but I can grant that permission, if you'll trust me long enough to explain."

　The dwarves regarded her with the particular wariness of people who'd already lost more than strangers usually took the trouble to notice.

　Their leader — a broad, weathered woman named Borga, gray-bearded like the rest of her kin despite the streaks of soot still ground into her clothes — finally stepped forward.

　"We've nowhere left worth being wary about protecting," she said, flat. "Our home's already gone. Doubt there's much left for anyone to take from us now."

　"What happened?" Senna asked.

　Borga's expression darkened.

　"Kingdom of Myrath decided the land above our cave made a fine testing ground for their explosive spellwork. Wasn't asking our permission. Wasn't asking anything, really — just shook our home to pieces a little more, every single day, for the better part of a year."

That's — that's genuinely cruel, in a mundane, bureaucratic way. Not even malicious, probably. Just careless enough not to bother checking who lived underneath their testing ground.

　"We told them to stop," Borga continued. "More than once. We've got firepower enough to have made that argument properly, if we'd wanted to — dwarves aren't known for going down easy, whatever the stories say. But it never seemed worth losing lives over. A fight with a kingdom's army, over land we could still hope they'd eventually leave be."

　She was quiet a moment.

　"Turned out that was the wrong bet. Cave finally gave out three weeks back. Buried what we couldn't carry out in time."

They chose peace, and it cost them everything anyway. That's not a fair trade. That's not fair at all.

　"I know a place," Senna said, once Borga had finished. "Not a kingdom. Not a lord who'll decide your worth by how useful you are to him. A real home, if you're willing to trust a stranger's word on it."

　"And what's the cost of this home," Borga asked, careful, clearly bracing for the answer every displaced person eventually learns to expect.

　"Whatever you're willing to give freely," Senna said. "Nothing more than that. I promise you that much, at least, before you decide anything further."

　Borga studied her a long moment — searching, weighing, the specific exhaustion of someone who'd trusted institutions before and paid for it.

　"Alright," she said finally, something loosening slightly in her shoulders. "We'll see this home of yours. Doubt it can cost us more than we've already lost."

　The humans, further south, told Senna a different but familiar shape of the same story — a village claimed outright by a neighboring lord, simply because its land bordered his own and he'd decided, unilaterally, that proximity was reason enough to call it his.

　"He didn't even pretend it was legal," one of the fathers told her, exhausted, a small child asleep against his shoulder. "Just moved his men in, told us to leave or become his tenants at whatever terms he decided. We left."

Same shape of cruelty, different flavor. Power deciding what belongs to it, regardless of who was there first.

　Senna led them the same way she'd led the dwarves — patient, honest, promising nothing except a real chance rather than another master dressed up in kinder words.

　They were afraid, walking toward whatever "ruler" actually waited at the end of that promise, several of the parents murmuring low, worried reassurances to children old enough to understand exactly what "ruler" had meant to them so far in their short, difficult lives.

They're expecting another lord. Another set of terms designed to extract everything useful from them and call the leftovers mercy.

They're about to get a very different surprise.