"Heroes save people because it's the right thing to do. I save people because dead protagonists make for boring stories. We are not the same."
***
The timeline was screaming at me.
Every second that passed brought us closer to the moment when the Morgenthorne family's sabotage would kick in. Support beams would crack. Ceilings would fall. Rhys and his team would be trapped in a section that was about to become a mass grave.
The protagonist would arrive dramatically to save the day. That was how the story was supposed to go. He would rescue the survivors. He would be celebrated as a hero. And Rhys Blackwood, the commoner with the spear and the sick sister, would die off-screen. A footnote in someone else's journey. A sacrifice to fuel character development for a guy who didn't need it.
Not today.
