First Blood on Delancey

He had protected one block, one borough, one nation, one world, or one fragile corridor between stars, depending on how far the war had widened by then. The map kept growing. The stakes kept climbing. The temptation to become harder, colder, simpler kept waiting at every victory. He washed blood out of his sleeves and looked at the rule in his memory because the paper copy had been destroyed several disasters ago. Power is not permission. Beneath it, he added the line that had carried him past survival: no one ascends alone. The next hours mattered because victories in the new world decayed quickly if no one repaired the ordinary damage underneath them.