Peace felt strange.No attacks. No resistance raids. No desperate battles where I had to choose between draining enemies or letting them kill people I'd promised to protect.Just governance. Administration. The boring, difficult work of making a functioning society. Turned out war was easier.The council met daily now. Not because of crisis. Because of normal problems. Resource allocation. Dispute resolution. Infrastructure maintenance. All the mundane details that kept communities alive.I attended every meeting. Mostly silent. Letting representatives debate and decide. Only speaking when asked directly. Trying to prove I could participate without dominating.It was harder than fighting had been."The western district wants more healers," Sarah reported. Industrial representative. Four weeks into the new peace. "They've got three. Need at least six to handle workplace injuries. But we don't have six healers to spare.""Train more," David suggested. Merchant Quarter. Always practical.

The first person died on day forty-three.A refugee. Woman maybe fifty. She'd arrived two weeks ago. Received minor telekinesis. Started working in the gardens. Contributing. Building a new life.Then she collapsed. Fever. Convulsions. Skin turning grey. Dead within hours.Mrs. Chen found her. Called for healers immediately. But by the time they arrived, nothing could be done."What killed her?" I asked. Standing over the body. Trying to understand how someone healthy yesterday could be dead today."I don't know." The healer looked frightened. Young man. Maybe twenty-five. One of the refugees I'd given healing magic to supplement our medical capacity. "I've never seen anything like this. It's not natural disease. It's magical. Something in her power itself.""That's impossible. I gave her stable magic. Tested. Integrated. Not corrupted.""Then test again. Because something went wrong."Three more died the next day. Same symptoms. Fever. Convulsions. Grey skin. All refugees. All people

Three months.Ninety days since I'd drained the Council. Ninety days since I'd started redistributing power. Ninety days of building something that might be democracy or might be elaborate self-deception.The city had changed. The Dregs no longer looked like the Dregs. Buildings repaired. Streets clean. Gardens everywhere. People with purpose. With agency. With the belief that their lives mattered.Three hundred people now carried power I'd distributed. Two hundred seventeen original residents. Eighty-three refugees who'd passed medical screening and integration protocols. All of them contributing. Working. Building.Only five more deaths from power rejection. The Confederacy protocols worked. Five percent mortality instead of thirty. Still tragic. Still permanent. But manageable. Acceptable according to cold calculations that measured lives against outcomes.I hated those calculations. Used them anyway. Because governing required accepting that not everyone could be saved. That optim

They came at dawn.Fifteen hundred combat mages. Six Council banners. Unified force marching through the streets toward our fortified districts. No subtlety. No stealth. Just overwhelming power moving with military precision.I watched from the command center. Enhanced vision let me see them from miles away. Let me count abilities. Identify specializations. Assess threats.The locket sang. So much power. So many abilities. So close. All I had to do was reach out. Take. Drain. Add to the collection.I pushed it down. Focused on the defensive plan. On the positions we'd prepared. On the people I'd promised to protect without becoming monster."They're splitting into three groups," Commander Wei observed. Studying the approach through enchanted scopes. "Main force coming directly up central avenue. Secondary force flanking east. Tertiary force flanking west. Standard pincer movement. They'll hit us from three sides simultaneously.""Our positions?" I asked."Ready. Defenders assigned. Ba

Dawn came grey and cold.Twenty-four hours remaining. Maybe less. The enemy had pulled back during the night. Not retreating. Regrouping. Preparing for final assault that would crush us completely.I hadn't slept. Couldn't sleep. Spent the night walking defensive positions. Talking to defenders. Seeing exhaustion. Seeing acceptance. Seeing people who'd made peace with dying.Mrs. Chen found me at sunrise. She looked older. Worn. Like the past three months had aged her decades."We recovered his body," she said. "During the night. Small team. They brought him back."The child. She meant the child. They'd risked themselves to retrieve his corpse. To bring him home. To let him rest somewhere other than burned street."Where is he?""The garden. We buried him under the fruit trees. Where it's peaceful. Where things grow." She paused. "He would have liked that. Being part of the garden. Feeding the trees. Contributing even in death."We walked to the garden together. The memorial had grown