𝐇𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐑𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐫, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐆𝐨𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐬.
Love is hope for the hopeless and sin for the saint. Love is both a salvation for the lost and a temptation for the righteous. It drives people to cross lines they swore ne...
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The writing in Italics means past through.
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I didn't raise my voice because I didn't need to when the room was already tense. I looked at my chachu first at the lines on his forehead that only appeared when the law inside him was losing a battle with the man and then at Karhan. His presence was dangerous in a quieter way. Calm. Measured. The kind of calm that usually comes after decisions are made.
"Don't kill." I said, my words steady even though my pulse wasn't. "Murder is not the solution."
For a second, I thought I had said it too late. Karhan didn't react immediately. He didn't bristle, didn't argue. He just looked at me, and in that look was something far more unsettling than rage was clarity. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, deliberate, "I won't kill him." he said. "He doesn't fear death." A pause. Calculated. Almost merciful. "He fears something else and he will get that."
I swallowed as his words settled into the room.
"His pride." Karhan continued, unflinching. "His honour. What frightens him is not death, it is being stripped of the stories he tell himself that the honour he wear like armour, the pride that convinces him that he is untouchable and living without that? That is his punishment."
I have always believed that killing is the laziest form of power. Anyone can end a life; it takes no imagination, no restraint, no courage. Death is final, yes but it is also clean. Too clean. It erases consequences, silences guilt, and lets the guilty escape the weight of what they have done. That is why it has never felt like justice to me. Only closure for the one who strikes the blow.
The law taught me this long before conscience did. You don't undo harm by creating another corpse. You don't restore balance by adding blood to the floor. Killing doesn't heal the living; it only gives them something else to mourn. And worse it hands the offender an easy exit. No reckoning. No recklessness returned. No days spent facing the mirror and recognising the monster staring back.
I don't want him dead. I want him awake.
Karhan spoke again, and this time there was no softness left to misread. "I will give him the most dishonourable end. He believes he is an honourable man. He survives on that belief." A faint, almost bitter pause followed. "And when an honourable man is stripped of honour, what remains is worse than death."
