The cage did not hold for long.

[b]Jilly[/b]’s strange little body pressed against iron, and the metal gave way in the way only magic makes possible—not shattered outward in some grand display, but softened, warped, and ruined just enough that bars bent apart with a shriek of protest. For one frozen heartbeat, Marra’s daughter only stared. She was smaller than fear had made her in everyone’s minds, dirt-smudged, pale, and all sharp breaths and wide eyes. Then survival won over shock. Her hand shot out, caught Jilly’s, and the moment the opening was wide enough she slipped through it and ran.

That was all the camp needed to understand what had been lost.

Shouts broke loose at once. The woman by the tent did not scream orders; she only moved, one clipped command enough to send the rest into motion. Arrows hissed through the clearing, one biting into earth, another clipping leaves close enough to sound like tearing cloth. [b]Fredrick[/b] crashed into the nearest threat not to win cleanly, but to buy time, forcing bodies to slow, turn, and react around him rather than after the fleeing girl. [b]Garreth[/b], breathing hard now and holding his wounded side tighter than before, took that small, precious opening and ran with the rest. It was not pretty. It was not orderly. It was the ragged, desperate kind of escape that only works because people commit to it before they can think better of it.

Branches whipped at shoulders. Roots threatened ankles. Behind them, the bandits came on in force now, no longer a camp but a hunt. Their boots pounded the logging path, their voices carrying between the trees in bursts of anger and direction. Once, twice, another arrow sliced past close enough to be felt rather than seen. For a stretch of heartbeats it seemed obvious how this would end: the wounded old guard would slow first, the child would stumble, the distance would close, and all the violence they had barely escaped would crash down at their backs.

Then the pursuit hit something it had not expected.

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[center][img]https://ik.imagekit.io/maxxo/Justin-sama.png[/img][/center]

A man stood in the middle of the path ahead as if he had arranged the forest itself for his entrance. His armor was absurdly polished, blue and gold catching what little light made it through the canopy; a red scarf swept at his shoulders with all the dignity of a stage curtain. Sparkles seemed almost offended not to gather around him. His face was ridiculous in a way that demanded attention, his posture worse, chin tipped high with the confidence of a man who had never once doubted that the world improved by seeing him. He lifted one gauntleted hand, inspected its gleam with grave personal interest, and only then turned his head enough to acknowledge the chaos rushing toward him.

[color=2e3192]“Oh, honestly,”[/color] came his voice—thin, nasal, and unbearably self-satisfied, as though he had been interrupted while admiring his own reflection in a spoon. [color=2e3192]“Must I truly do everything myself? Go on, then. Run along. Try not to collapse before the bridge. I would hate for this rescue to look untidy.”[/color]

He did not look worried. He did not even look hurried.

The bandits did.

Steel rang behind them not long after, followed by the sound of men realizing too late that they had run into something far beyond the sort of prey they were used to chasing. Whatever that man did on that path, he did it without needing thanks and with every expectation that he deserved it.

By the time the bridge came into view again, the world had narrowed to breath, pain, mud, and relief. Marra was already there, having lived every second of the escape in dread of seeing only half the people return. When her daughter appeared through the reeds, that dread broke. She did not call out first. She simply moved—stumbling, then running, then dropping to her knees to catch the girl in both arms as if brute force might somehow make up for the hours of helplessness that had come before. The child clung back just as fiercely.

Harrowfen Bridge held the moment in stillness. Marsh water whispered below. Garreth stayed standing only because pride and habit were doing the work his body no longer wished to do. The road behind remained open, the sounds of pursuit gone distant or broken.

For now, the girl was safe. The mother had her child back. And in the quiet that followed the running and the fear and the clash of steel, there was finally room enough for whatever words came next.