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Kaelen picked up a shard of glass from the plain. It cut his palm. He didn't flinch.

"You opened the Gate of War," it said, "inside a ship that has forgotten how to fight. What do you imagine will happen now?" kwntr-bab-alharh

The door did not swing open. It inverted . Kaelen picked up a shard of glass from the plain

"Now the war begins," it said. "And the first battle is you ." " it said

On the seven-hundredth night, Kaelen broke the seal.

"I imagined," he said quietly, "that war isn't always a weapon. Sometimes it's a refusal. The ship is dying because we chose peace over struggle. We stopped fighting the dark. We stopped fighting the cold. We stopped fighting for each other."