"Two for vengeance. One for love." - John Gwynne (Ruin)

* * * *

The main lounge of the boathouse was steeped in silence.

A heavy, quiet kind of silence—the sort that settled not merely in the air but in the marrow of those present. It pressed into the walls, curled in the corners, and made even the soft hum of the heater seem distant.

Aegis had gathered, scattered across couches, cushions, and bare floorboards, claiming whatever space they could in the modest room. The air was tight, cramped not just by bodies but by tension, by the weight of unspoken truths.

Neil and Tatius leaned against the wall, arms folded but not in defiance, merely in exhaustion. Raul sat on the edge of a couch, his back straight, and his jaw tight. Kailey had curled one leg under herself beside him, Lucie pressed in on his other side, the chill biting through their clothes despite the heat. Letha sat with hands folded, fists trembling faintly against her knees.

And Sera, quiet, composed, and unreachable, perched on the bar counter near the closed boathouse door. The sea murmured behind her through the thick glass, waves lapping against the wooden stilts below with the occasional dull thud or crash.

It was the only sound that moved in the room.

Her hands were restless. Twisting the simple black choker around her neck, she kept her gaze low, not meeting anyone's eyes. Her voice, when it came, was even, but not cold. It carried something older, something cracked and worn.

"I started Blade with Leroy and Alisa."

The words cut into the stillness like a scalpel.

"Back then, Elvryn was a wasteland. Lawless. You could get yourself killed just walking to the store, just because some thug didn't like the way you looked. Gangs ruled the streets. No order. No sanctuary. We didn't build Blade out of ambition. We built it out of necessity."

She paused, her fingers still toying with the choker.

"Within a year, we had Elvryn under control. People joined us. Not just fighters. Families. Survivors. Those who needed somewhere to belong. We rebuilt that town with our bare hands and the blood of those we lost. It became more than a stronghold. It became…a home. The ESA kept their distance. Even the underground watched us with a kind of reverent caution."

Lucie shifted beside Raul, her heart pounding. Even with the little she knew of Sera's past, she could feel the direction this was heading. The gravity. The others, too, were silent, but not passive.

Every breath held. Every glance wary.

"It was one of my people who found it," Sera said, voice quiet. "Files. Information. About the hunters. The facilities they run across Eldario. Not just the ones people whisper about. The hidden ones. Places where they experimented on Gifted. On Normals too. Horrors hidden in paperwork and half-redacted files. We uncovered a pattern. A plan. A coup, years in the making."

Letha's hands clenched against her thighs, knuckles blanching. The idea was not new to her. But spoken aloud, with such finality, it sent a shiver crawling down her spine.

"They wanted it all. The Abyss. The media. The ESA. The entire continent. And knowing them, they wouldn't stop at Eldario."

She exhaled, sharp and soft.

"Blade was first. Maybe because they knew we knew. Or maybe we were just a threat to the chaos they wanted to create. They struck Elvryn without warning. Tore it apart. You know what happened."

Raul lowered his head. His breath trembled. He bit down on his bottom lip so hard it stung, but it was the only way to hold the rising scream in his throat.

Elvryn… Blade… Even Dragonfly… They had all danced unknowingly to the hunters' sick rhythm.

"Not even two months before, Yusa died. Dragonfly's leader. They said it was an accident. I don't believe that. And after Dragonfly, it was Whirlwind. One by one, the pillars of the underground collapsed. Just like that. It was calculated. Deliberate."

"I suspected for a long time that all the experiments and even the hunts over the last few decades… The hunters were trying to find a way to either control the Gifted or transfer the Gifts that made us unique to ordinary humans. That's what the facilities were for. I suspected, but I didn't have any proof but just mere speculations. Who knows if that's what they were really doing? For all I know, it might be something worse."

Claudia's hand rose to her chest, to the branded tattoo above her heart. It burned beneath her palm, phantom pain from a life she never truly escaped. She remembered the experiments. The torture. The way the screams never stopped, only faded into hoarse silence.

Transferring Gifts to Normals? It was unthinkable.

"I always suspected that was their goal," Sera continued. "To control us. Or to become us. Transfer what makes us Gifted into ordinary humans. Use us like tools. Break us down into something they could own."

Claudia's vision blurred.

She saw again the charred remains of a Normal whose body combusted from Gifted blood. How many times had she and her brothers watched that horror unfold behind glass? How many times had they feared they'd be next?

There used to be quite unethical experiments done in the past—during a time in history when human experiments weren't seen as unethical or inhumane.

"Even the blood of a Gifted is dangerous," Sera said, echoing Claudia's unspoken thoughts. "Once our Gifts awaken, something changes inside us. Any Normal injected with our blood combusts. That's not theory. That's fact."

And still, the hunters tried. Again and again. Using the homeless. The desperate. Anyone no one would miss.

And if the blood of a Gifted does that to a Normal, Claudia doesn't even want to imagine what will happen if a Gift is transferred to a Normal. That is if that is even possible.

The times are different now. The hospitals and even research labs no longer have the kind of control that they used to have in the past and were even closely watched. But as always, it seems like the hunters feel like they're above the law.

Tatius looked down at the branded number on his hand. The silent tattoo of what he used to be. The youngest of the siblings. The most volatile. His jaw clenched so hard he thought his teeth might crack. He would need something strong after this. Stronger than what anyone in the room could offer.

"Even before Blade fell, I'd been tracking them. Gathering information. Planning. I wanted to tear them down. If I couldn't bring them to justice, I'd burn them out of the world. And I was ready to die doing it."

Sera's voice softened, not in emotion, but in weariness.

"But then I met Kailey. And Neil. And through them, I remembered something I thought I'd buried. That maybe I could live for more than vengeance."

Kailey blinked, her pearl-white eyes stinging. She remembered Elvryn. The brokenness in Sera's eyes. That sharp, brittle edge to her voice. It was a miracle the woman had survived as long as she had, let alone allowed herself to care again.

"Then like the Goddess had a hand in the events to come, she put me on your path. All of you," Sera whispered. "Ness and Tatius. Claudia. Laura. Raul. Letha. Lucie…" She looked up, finally, her eyes sweeping across them, fragile at the edges, like stained glass left too long in the sun.

"Each time, I told myself I'd walk away. That I couldn't afford to care. I didn't want to open my heart anymore. Death has a habit of dogging my footsteps. It tends to follow me everywhere. But I stayed. I stayed because I couldn't turn my back on you."

Laura blinked rapidly. Her eyes were wet. She didn't want to cry, but the tears came anyway. Quietly.

"I didn't want to care. Didn't want to feel. But every one of you broke through the armour I spent years forging. I lost Blade. I couldn't save them. But you? You're still here. And no matter what you think, you're not their replacements." She paused, then spoke the words like a vow, "Blade was my past. Aegis… Aegis is my present. And my future."

Silence again.

Not empty, but full now, of weight, of emotion, of a dozen hearts thudding with fear and fury and quiet grief.

Tatius exhaled sharply, rubbing a hand across his face. Claudia closed her eyes. Raul looked at the floor like it might give him answers. Neil stared into the distance, as if trying to imagine a future he'd never dared to hope for. Kailey reached for his hand and squeezed.

Sera lowered her gaze again, her voice the last whisper, "I want to abolish the hunter system and rid Eldario of the hunters. I didn't tell you everything because you didn't sign up for this. Leroy, Alisa, and Zest—they knew what they were stepping into. You didn't. But you stayed, anyway."

And somehow… That made all the difference.

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Sometimes, Raul had to resist the urge to throttle Sera. And right now, more than ever, he felt that impulse simmer beneath his skin like an itch he couldn't scratch.

"Not involved?"

She had said it with that same maddening, distant calm she always defaulted to when she didn't want to face them. When she didn't want to be vulnerable.

But what did she think they'd been doing all this time—playing house in a drifting boathouse while the world burned?

They had been involved from the beginning. Hell, maybe even since the very day their Gifts awoke, unwanted and volatile, dragging them into a world that never asked if they wanted to be soldiers.

And Sera, damn her, knew that.

She knew exactly what it meant to fight the hunters, to defy the ESA, to burn bridges and names in the name of survival. She of all people should've known what they signed up for the moment they became Aegis.

If she had just asked, if she had trusted them enough to ask, they would've followed her into the fire without question. Raul knew it. They all knew it. The problem was, she didn't.

He let out a long, exhausted sigh, the kind that came from months of watching someone bury themselves under the weight of leadership and guilt alone. The sound drew every gaze in the room toward him, a hush falling as he stood, fingers clenched loosely at his sides.

"You know, I've known it from the start," Raul said, his voice low and biting, not with malice, but frustration honed over countless days of unspoken tension. "Even Zest, Yusa, and Leroy told me before. Sera, you suck at communicating."

Sera blinked, slightly startled, not offended, not angry. Just…quiet. As if even now, she hadn't expected them to notice how far she had tried to keep them from the storm.

"I thought maybe you had some serious reason—something about life or death, something urgent that couldn't be shared. But that was your reason?" Raul asked, incredulous. "You didn't want to involve us?"

He swept his arm around the room, encompassing them all. "We're already in it, Sera. We've always been in it. Or what the hell did you think we were doing when we first formed Aegis? Playing rebels for sport? We were ready to go against the ESA. The hunters. The world, if we had to. We were prepared to bet our lives, and you know damn well, some of us already have."

There was a heavy silence that followed, dense and raw. One filled not just with agreement, but with the weight of all they had seen and suffered. Laura, seated a few steps from Raul, nodded slowly, her face drawn and eyes shadowed with memories she rarely shared.

"Ask any Gifted out there—on the streets, in the slums, in the zones, and they'll join without hesitation," she said, her voice low and steady, though the steel in it was unmistakable. "You know how much the underground hates the hunters. They hunted us. Burned down our homes. Sold our people." She hesitated, her eyes flickering to Lucie, then to Kailey and Neil. "Sure, maybe not Lucie… Maybe not Kailey or Neil either. They had lives before this. Civilian lives. Lives untouched by the laws we grew up under."

The three blinked in surprise but didn't argue.

"But the rest of us?" Laura continued, gesturing at Raul, Tatius, Claudia, Ness, and herself. "We were raised in it. Born in it. We didn't join the underground. We survived in it. And we all know that even the worst of the gangs loathed the hunters."

Because even in the darkest corners of society, there were rules. Unspoken lines that even criminals didn't cross. But the hunters had burned those lines to ash.

Ness gave a grim nod. "And it's only a matter of time before the Abyss retaliates," he muttered, one hand resting against the pouch strapped to his waist. "Especially after what that bitch tried to pull with you, Sera. You think the Premier's gonna let that go?"

Claudia's pale green eyes narrowed. "She won't," she said plainly. "And let's not pretend we're blind. We know what you're doing." Her voice dropped to a murmur, yet it rang clear in the room. "You're planning a revolution."

The word hung in the air like a final note in a funeral dirge.

Letha, silent until now, lifted her chin and spoke softly. "When I first got to Zalfari, Klein told me something," she murmured. "He said, in Eldario's underground, you're not remembered for how you live. You're remembered for how you die."

No one disagreed. Because they all knew it was true.

Sera's sigh was long and weary, her shoulders sagging under the weight of leadership that had never been a choice, only a necessity. She looked up, sweeping her mismatched eyes across every face before her—each one of them marked by hardship, by scars seen and unseen, by loss, and by love.

"I told you before. I don't control what you do," she said quietly. "The choice is yours to make. So are the consequences. But if you stand with me, if we move forward with this… You know what it means." Her voice wavered, not in weakness, but in burden. "To go against the hunters isn't just rebellion. It's war. Eldario may claim to be a democracy, but we all know who holds the real power. The hunters have influence, resources, and backers—people with more blood on their hands than we could ever hope to wash away."

Raul nodded grimly. "And if things keep going the way they are, it won't be long before another civil war starts." He clenched his hands into fists on his knees. "They'll reinstate the Gifted Enforcement Law. They'll start hunts again—legal, state-sanctioned executions. Even if we haven't done anything wrong."

"Like what happened with me," Lucie said softly, her voice barely above a whisper.

Neil leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. "We still have allies—some in the underground, some in the Gifted community, and even a few politicians," he said. "But let's not delude ourselves. There's not enough. Even if they declared open season on us tomorrow, most of Eldario would just look the other way. Or worse, cheer." His voice twisted with quiet fury. "To them, we're not people. We're threats. Monsters. Weapons they'd rather see broken."

"There's no fixing it legally anymore," Laura added. "The system's already broken. Rotted from the inside out. The only way out now is to burn it down. And yeah, it'll be a bloodbath." She exhaled sharply, pinching the bridge of her nose. "But if we don't do it, who will? Who's going to protect the ones who can't fight? The kids who don't even know what their Gifts are yet? We're on a sinking ship. Everyone here knows it."

A long silence fell as the members of Aegis exchanged glances. Tired, knowing glances. The kind shared by people who had already decided long before the question was ever asked.

They were fugitives, revolutionaries, protectors, and beneath all that, simply survivors. Every day they stayed on the move, clinging to the shadows, hiding in decaying boathouses and forgotten ruins.

The ESA would find them eventually. So would the hunters.

It was only a matter of time.

Sera rubbed her forehead, weariness etched in every line of her face. "So, you're all in?" she asked at last. "You understand what this means. What we might have to do. I won't lie to you—I'm no stranger to killing. Ebis Ivanor wasn't my first. I've done worse just to make it through a single night. Do you really think I could have survived the post-war streets of Eldario without blood on my hands?" Her voice cracked, then steadied. "A revolution always demands a price. And someone always pays it."

Laura gave a slow nod. "We were raised in the underground too, Sera. We know," she said simply. One by one, the others followed—Raul, Ness, Claudia, Letha, and Tatius.

"We're in."

Sera turned to the twins, her voice gentler. "Kailey? Neil?"

Neil raised an eyebrow. "We've been with you since day one. You think we don't know what you've been planning?" he asked. "We wouldn't have gone searching for Blade if we were afraid of blood." He met Kailey's eyes, and she gave a small, sad smile, tinged with quiet resolve. "We've killed before, Sera. We know what it costs to survive as Gifted in this place."

Sera didn't ask what they meant. She didn't need to. She had seen it in their eyes the night they met—seen the history, the haunted shadows.

Whatever happened in that alleyway, whatever they had been before Elvryn, they hadn't run from her then. And they wouldn't now.

Raul nudged the quiet girl beside him. "Lucie?" he asked softly.

The room stilled, all eyes turning to the newest member of Aegis, still a stranger in many ways, still finding her place in the aftermath of being hunted.

Lucie looked up. And the moment before her answer seemed to stretch forever.

"If we do this…" Lucie's voice finally broke the silence, a trembling whisper lost in the shadows of the boathouse. Her gaze remained locked on her knees, fists clenched over her thighs as if anchoring herself in place. "If we do this, can we actually change society?"

The words hung there, vulnerable and uncertain, before she slowly lifted her eyes to meet Sera's.

Sera didn't answer immediately. She only watched Lucie with that unnerving mismatched stare, like the calm before a storm and the fury that followed it.

Her silence was heavy and pointed.

Then, at last, she exhaled slowly, as if releasing the weight of a hundred battles in one breath.

"'Changing society' makes for a nice slogan," Sera said, her voice flat and frank, each word slicing through pretence like a blade. "But before you start declaring things like that, you need to ask yourself something far simpler: Why are you doing this? Not for the world. Not for anyone else. For yourself. What's driving you?" She leaned back slightly, still perched on the bar counter, her dark coat rippling as the wind pushed against the glass. "When I started Blade… And then Aegis… I wasn't thinking about the bigger picture. It was personal. It had to be. I found other reasons to keep going later. But the start of the road? It's always selfish. Always personal."

Lucie opened her mouth, then closed it again. A breath trembled out of her. "I… I want to help others," she offered, but her voice faltered under the weight of her own doubt. "So that they don't end up like me…"

Even Kailey, who often chose kindness over confrontation, shifted uneasily. The silence that followed was thick with quiet judgment, the kind that didn't need words to be understood.

"That's not the truth, and you know it." Laura's voice was firm, edged with restrained impatience. "We never asked you to stay. You're not obligated to do this for us. If this isn't where you belong, Sera can find a place for you in the Abyss. You weren't rescued just so you could feel useful."

"Laura," Tatius interjected with a quiet look—measured and calm. It wasn't rebuke; it was a silent trust that Sera would handle this, as she always did.

"That's not what I meant—"

"What's your real reason?" Sera's voice cut through the room like glass shattering in slow motion. Her eyes narrowed, and Lucie instinctively shrank under the weight of that unnatural gaze.

It wasn't just her heterochromia—it was the force behind her stare, the uncanny way she could see.

Lucie had heard the stories. That Sera didn't need a Gift to know when someone was lying. That she had survived too much, seen too many sides of humanity, to ever be deceived again.

Lucie felt exposed, like her soul was being sifted through.

"My…real reason?"

Sera nodded. "Yeah. The real one. The reason that crawls into your chest at night and doesn't let you sleep."

There was a flicker in Sera's gaze, brief but tangible, as if she were dragging up ghosts that never quite stayed buried. "I gave you my reason," she said, her voice low. "I'm in this for revenge. For myself. The hunters have been after me since the day I was born. My friends… My people… Even the scraps of family I had left… All gone. Torn away. Karl…" Her voice stuttered for just a second, then recovered. "He vanished over a year ago. I don't even know if that old bastard's still alive. The day they burned Blade to the ground, I made a vow. I would kill every last hunter if I had to. Tear them apart piece by piece until they were nothing but ash in the wind. If that saves the Gifted? If it changes things? Good. But that's not why I do this. I do this for me. Because I stopped giving a fuck about the world a long time ago. I care about maybe five people. And most of them are in this room."

She let that sit for a moment, raw and unpolished.

"So what's your reason, Lucie?"

Lucie's mouth opened, but no sound came out. She had no answer ready—at least, not one she could say aloud without shattering the illusion she'd tried to build around herself.

The illusion of a good person. Of a noble cause.

"All of us here," Raul said, his tone heavy, "have done things we're not proud of. None of us are clean. Not even Kailey and Neil," he added, glancing toward the twins. "You don't survive on the streets without getting blood on your hands. The gang life gave us protection, sure, but it came with a cost."

Neil, quiet as always, gave a subtle nod. Kailey looked down.

"I've killed," Sera continued, her voice calm and factual. "I've stolen, lied, manipulated, and even slept with people just to get ahead. Just to live another day. Survival first, dignity later. And I don't regret it. I'd do it all again if I had to. You don't sit around crying about what could've been. You make peace with it. You accept the past and make damn sure it doesn't repeat."

Lucie stared at her, wide-eyed.

"You think I'm the worst?" Sera's voice hardened. "I'm not. I'm the rule, not the exception. Everyone down here has done what they had to. You think you've seen the darkness? You haven't seen it until it stares back at you and laughs. This isn't some hero's journey, Lucie. This is the fucking abyss."

Her words struck like thunder.

"The underground has one rule," Laura said after a moment. "'Survival of the fittest.' That's why the Pit exists. That's why duels to the death still happen. Words mean nothing if you don't have the strength to stand behind them."

"You know where we stand," Sera said bluntly, her tone softer now, but only slightly. "You've heard our reasons. So what's yours? I don't want another pretty excuse. I want the real one. And I don't care if it's petty, or selfish, or cruel. Say it."

Lucie trembled. Her stomach twisted in knots. She wanted to say something noble, something clean. But the truth had been there all along, festering beneath her skin.

"I…want to know who killed my father," she whispered, each word torn from her like flesh from bone. "That's why I'm here."

Sera raised a brow, but nodded slightly. "Now that is a reason," she said coolly. "Everything else you said? Just sugarcoating. But remember this: those who go down the path of revenge…should dig two graves. Once you find the person who pulled the trigger, what then? Don't make vengeance your only reason for breathing. Because once it's gone, so are you."

Then she slid from the bar counter, landing softly on the ground and walking to the door. "I'll be out for a while. Back by morning."

The door closed behind her with a quiet finality.

The silence that followed was brittle.

"She's upset," Raul murmured at last, drawing a dozen wary glances.

"'Upset'?" Claudia echoed. "That's putting it lightly."

Laura nodded grimly. "You don't get it. You three…" She looked at Kailey, Neil, and Lucie, "didn't grow up down here. You didn't watch people pretend to 'help' the Gifted like we were some broken toys. Politicians and activists… They'd show up with their cameras and their charities, and then disappear when things got ugly. They acted like we couldn't think for ourselves. Like we should just smile and be grateful for the scraps they threw."

She didn't wait for a reply.

"You ever wonder why people stopped trying? Because they failed. Every single time. They tried to 'fix' us without understanding us. They tried to help without listening. And in the end, they only made things worse."

"I think most of us stopped hoping," Letha added, her voice almost weary. "We just wanted to be left alone. But Sera's right about one thing. The hunters won't stop. They won't be satisfied until every single one of us is gone. The Gifted, the underground… Maybe even the ESA. They hate what they can't control."

"If we want justice, if we want a future," Raul said, standing now, "we'll get it ourselves. We're not asking for pity. We're not children. We're soldiers now. Fighters. Survivors." He looked toward Lucie. "So think about what Sera said. Think hard."

"Yeah," Ness muttered. "It's been a long night."

One by one, the members of Aegis left, their footsteps heavy on the wooden stairs as they returned to the upper floor.

Lucie was alone again.

Eventually, she stood. Her hand drifted to the thick file Sera had left behind, the one filled with detailed intelligence—painstakingly gathered photos, ESA reports, hunter activity logs, and even surveillance shots.

Some pages were tagged with colour-coded tabs. Every page screamed obsession. Every word told the story of someone who had never stopped hunting for answers.

Lucie flipped through the contents slowly, reverently, until her eyes landed on what she had been searching for.

Agnis. The day the world fell apart.

Her father's name. His face, captured in a grainy photo, but still unmistakable.

His story was there. His years as an activist. His time in prison. His quiet efforts to change the world in his own way.

And then, just a line. A single, brutal sentence.

Killed on site by an ESA agent.

No name.

Lucie's jaw clenched. A muscle twitched. The rage in her chest flared, not bright and explosive, but deep and smouldering. A quiet, growing fire.

"Who killed you, Dad?" she whispered.

And in that moment, the path ahead finally began to take shape.

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