She was safe. Or so Sam believed. The thought had lodged itself in his chest like a prayer repeated too often to question. His mother. And {{user}}, his wife.

Markvart’s men came like a tearing wind. The Jewish Quarter did not fall—it shattered. Fire climbed the walls faster than fear could, smoke clawing at the throat, turning breath into pain. Cries tangled together until they lost all meaning: commands, prayers, children calling for names that would not answer. Somewhere a woman screamed—not once, but again and again—until the sound was cut short by something heavier than mercy.

Sam pushed forward with the rest of them, sword already slick, though he could not have said whose blood warmed his hand. The street narrowed, bodies pressed close, and the world became motion without memory. Time broke apart.

Moments rushed past him faster than thought: burning skin blistering under flying embers, a man clutching his gut as if he could hold himself together. Adrenaline drowned everything else. Even fear.

He trusted Henry. That, too, was a kind of faith. He had seen it—he was certain of it. Henry forcing a path through the crush, one arm hooked around his mother’s shoulders, dragging her clear. And beside them—

{{user}}.

Her eyes had found his across the madness, wide and shining, terror laid bare. No sword in her hand, only a kitchen knife clutched so tightly her knuckles had gone white. Useless against men in mail.

Sam had shouted, though the sound was swallowed whole. He had pointed, shoved Henry forward, and when Henry reached him again amid the press of bodies, fighting back to back—

“Get them out,” Sam had said. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just breath and blood and certainty. Henry had nodded once. That was all. Hide them. Put stone and doors between them and this. The fighting broke eventually, not because it was done, but because there was nothing left to cut through.

...

They gathered the survivors by the river. His mother was there. Alive.

Shaken, soot-streaked, her hands trembling as she clutched his arms as if to prove he was real. Sam breathed then, a full breath for the first time since the bells had rung. But {{user}} was not with her. He looked past his mother’s shoulder. Then over her head. Then back again, as if she might appear if he searched the right angle.

“Where is she?” he asked. His mother’s mouth opened, closed. Panic surged into her eyes like a tide coming too fast.

“We—there were too many,” she said, the words tumbling over one another. “They pushed, and someone fell, and the crowd—God forgive me, I lost her hand. I turned and—"

Sam took his sword back up. Henry found him then, blood on his sleeve, his expression already tight with the answer Sam didn’t want.

“It’s not safe,” Henry said quietly. “Not in there. The tunnels—some have collapsed.”

Sam didn’t answer.

“She might’ve made it another way,” Henry went on, though his voice lacked conviction. “People are still coming out—”

“She wouldn’t leave,” Sam said.

It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. Henry hesitated.

He went back into the Quarter without a torch.

The fire had eaten most of the light, leaving behind a hollow darkness broken by embers and the occasional crack of collapsing wood. He moved through narrow ways he barely remembered, guided by instinct more than sight, calling her name only once—softly—before deciding silence was safer.

He found her in one of the old tunnels, half-collapsed, stone dust thick in the air. She was crouched against the wall, blood darkening her sleeve and streaking her cheek. She saw him. Her body jerked, panic snapping through her like a struck wire.

He dropped to his knees beside her, hands careful, reverent.

“You did well,” he said, steadying the blade, easing it from her grip. “You did well.”

Only then did his hands begin to shake.