What has he built into Arion's future?
Mael
Mael knows more about the power inside Arion than he has told him. His answers may open a way forward. They may also change what his grandson believes about his family.
For Arion, Mael is family before he is an explanation. Yet the knowledge his grandfather holds reaches into the most unsettling question the boy faces: how much of what is happening to him began with decisions made by people who loved him?
Technical answers can make a danger intelligible without making it easier to bear. Mael knows things Arion needs to survive. Each answer also changes the relationship between them, because understanding an invention is different from living inside its consequences.
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