4338.207 · July 26, 2018 AD
The Man Who Said Yes
Kain Jeffries had never learned how to refuse a favour. His mother asked him to check on Jamie—he went. Luke asked him to wait—he stayed. Luke asked him to help move furniture—he agreed. Every yes was a step closer to a door he didn't know was waiting. Every polite instinct, every lesson about helping family, every moment he chose courtesy over suspicion led him to the same place: a world he couldn't leave.
The settlement needed hands that could build. Luke saw that need standing on his doorstep, wrapped in the body of Jamie's nephew and the politeness of someone who didn't know how to say no.
Kain came looking for his uncle. He found lies, silence, and a man sweating through a fabricated story about TV cabinets and downstairs rooms. His instincts told him something was wrong. His manners told him not to make a scene. When the sliding door opened onto impossible colours and a push came from behind, courtesy had already cost him everything.
Bixbus gained a builder that day—someone with the skills to construct walls and bridges and whatever else survival demanded. That he arrived through betrayal rather than invitation would define his first weeks in Clivilius: the rage, the grief, the fists that found Luke's face before anyone could stop them.
