"Now you're free."

"Now I'm lost." He laughed bitterly. "Freedom is terrifying when you don't know what to do with it."

I understood that more than he knew.

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to understand what's really happening. The cycles. The Council. The League. All of it." He leaned forward. "You know more than you've told me."

"Suspected."

"You prepared. Had contingencies, backup plans." His eyes were sharp despite the exhaustion. "You're not just a talented student. You're something else."

I considered how much to reveal. How much he could handle.

"I'm someone who learned the truth early. About the cycles. About predetermined roles. About how the world really works."

"How?"

"That's complicated." I met his gaze. "But I can tell you this. You were meant to be the hero. I was meant to be the villain you defeated. That was the script. The Council wrote it. The League rebelled against it. And now we're caught between them."

"So what are you?"

"I'm trying to break the script entirely. To prove that roles don't matter. That choice does."

Adrian was quiet for a long moment. "Can I help?"

"With what?"

"Breaking the script and fighting the Council. Whatever you're actually doing." He looked at his hands. "I'm not the hero everyone thinks I am. But maybe I can be something real instead."

I studied him. The exhaustion. The doubt. The genuine desire to do something meaningful.

"It's dangerous. More dangerous than yesterday. The League will come back. The Council will respond. People will die."

"People are already dying."

"Fair point."

"And honestly?" Adrian smiled grimly. "I'd rather die fighting for something real than live comfortably in a lie."

I extended my hand across the table.

"Then we fight together. Not as hero and villain. Just as two people trying to survive."

He took my hand. Shook it.

"Deal."

"What are you smiling about?" Adrian asked.

"Just... progress. We've made progress."

"Toward what?"

"Toward breaking the cycle and toward freedom." I stood carefully. "Rest for now. Heal. In two weeks, we start planning the real fight."

"Against who?"

"Everyone who thinks they can control us."

After he left, I stood at the window, looking at Silvercrest. The destroyed arena. The recovering city. The world that would never quite be the same.

We'd survived the tournament.

We'd survived the League's attack.

And now, finally, we had the allies to fight back.

The real war was beginning.

And this time, we wouldn't be caught unprepared.

☆☆▪︎▪︎☆☆

The knock on my door came at midnight.

I was awake. Had been for hours. Sleep was a luxury I couldn't afford with broken ribs and a mind that wouldn't stop replaying the deaths I'd witnessed.

"Come in."

The door opened. Victoria Steelheart entered, moving silently despite her presence being overwhelming. Her aura had changed since I'd last seen her up close, from silver-crimson to that light and blood intertwined.

She'd become something between resistance fighter and League member.

Something new.

"You look terrible," she said, closing the door behind her.

"Everyone keeps saying that." I shifted carefully in the hospital bed. "You look... different."

"I am different." She pulled a chair over, sat. "Three days fighting The Huntress changes you. Learning her techniques. Absorbing her power. Becoming something she didn't expect."

"Is that why you're here? To explain?"

"To warn." Her eyes were hard. "And to apologize."

That surprised me. "For what?"

"For leaving and for going dark? For making everyone think I was dead or turned." She looked at her hands. They trembled slightly. "For not being there when the attack happened. If I'd been positioned differently, if I'd anticipated better...."

"We saved eight thousand people. You saved eight thousand people by arriving when you did."

"And lost two hundred and thirty-seven because I wasn't there sooner."

"You can't carry that. Trust me, I've tried. It'll crush you."

She met my eyes. "How do you live with it? The dead. The ones you couldn't save."

"Badly. But I keep moving forward because stopping won't bring them back." I gestured to the other chair. "Sit. Tell me what happened. The real story. Not the rumors."

Victoria was quiet for a moment. Then she began.

"After I engaged The Huntress the first time, during the rescue mission, we fought for hours. She was high rank and I was also high rank. Neither of us could win."

"So you talked."

"She talked. I listened." Victoria's jaw tightened. "She told me things. About the League and about previous cycles. About the heroes who came before."

"What did she say?"

"That I was the seventh Victoria. That every hundred years, someone with my name and abilities appears. That six previous Victorias have existed. Three joined the Council. Two were killed by the League. One went insane and killed herself."

I felt cold. "The cycles are that specific?"

"More specific than you know. The Huntress showed me records. Detailed accounts of previous cycles. Heroes, villains, supporting cast, all recurring. Names change slightly. Circumstances vary. But the pattern repeats."

"She showed you this why?"

"To break me. To prove that resistance is futile. That the cycle always wins." Victoria's hands clenched. "But it had the opposite effect. It made me furious."

"Furious enough to make a deal?"

"Furious enough to play a very dangerous game." She leaned forward. "I told The Huntress I'd join the League. Learn their techniques. Become one of them. She was suspicious but intrigued. I was SS-rank with potential for more. An asset worth recruiting."

"So she trained you."

"For three days. The most brutal training I've ever experienced." Victoria pulled back her sleeve. Scars covered her arm. Fresh ones. "She nearly killed me a dozen times. But each time I survived, I learned. Her techniques. Her power. Her weaknesses."

"You were planning to betray her from the start."

"I was planning to become strong enough to fight her. Whether that meant betrayal or genuinely joining, I'd decide when the moment came." She covered the scars. "Then the tournament attack happened. I felt it through the connection she'd established. Knew immediately what was happening."

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