Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 818: Close call

The kitchen light hummed on a half second before it actually brightened, and Sophie stood in front of it holding a mug she hadn’t filled yet, staring at nothing.

Her hand wasn’t shaking anymore. It had been, for the first ten minutes after she’d sat up in bed, and she’d counted that as progress even while she wasn’t sure what she was recovering from.

’It’s never lied to me before,’ she thought, watching the coffee machine cycle through its motions without really seeing it. ’Every time it’s shown me something, it’s meant something. That’s the whole point of it. That’s why I trust it enough to act on it in the field, even when it doesn’t make sense yet.’

’So why does this one feel different.’

The coffee machine gurgled behind her, and she didn’t move to catch the cup underneath it.

’Because I want it to be wrong,’ she thought. ’That’s the honest answer. I want it to be wrong badly enough that I’m sitting here inventing reasons it might be, instead of doing what I’d tell anyone else to do the second something like this comes through.’

Footsteps came around the corner, Sam in yesterday’s shirt, hair flat on one side, mug already in hand out of pure habit before he’d even registered she was standing there.

"You’re up early," he said. "Or late. I’ve stopped being able to tell which one applies to either of us."

"Early," Sophie said. "I think."

He didn’t push it, grabbed his own mug, leaned against the counter to wait his turn at the machine, and let the silence sit the way it always did between two people who spent more hours awake in this kitchen than either of them probably should.

Sophie poured her coffee and didn’t drink it.

’Lila’s already got everyone tense,’ she thought. ’Kelvin’s tense. Diana’s tense. I’ve been tense since the lobby. Maybe that’s all this is. Maybe my own head just handed me the worst version of a fear that’s already sitting in every conversation we’ve had this week, and I’m about to make it real by treating a nightmare like a prophecy.’

’But it’s never done that before.’

’Not once. Every single time it’s shown me something, it’s meant something, and I trusted it enough to move on it in the field even when I didn’t understand it yet. Why would tonight be the first exception.’

’Because you want it to be.’

She turned the mug slowly in her hands, watching the steam curl up and disappear.

’If I tell people right now,’ she thought, ’and I’m wrong, I’ve just handed everyone another reason to distrust each other on top of everything already sitting on this table. If I don’t tell anyone, and I’m right, I’ve had it in my hands and did nothing with it.’

’There’s no version of this where doing nothing feels safe.’

Sam moved past her toward the machine, and she caught herself watching him without really seeing him either, her mind still turning the same loop it had been turning since she woke up.

’Sit with it a little longer,’ she told herself. ’You don’t have to decide anything in this kitchen at five in the morning. Just don’t let yourself convince you it was nothing before you’ve actually let yourself sit with the possibility it wasn’t.’

**

Later that evening, Miss Brooks and Lila met at a place to drink.

The bar sat two streets back from the harbor, low ceiling, dark wood that had clearly survived long enough to matter, a chalkboard behind the counter advertising something called Old Coastal Brew, hand-brewed, purely natural, no synthetic additives, the kind of place that had figured out its whole identity around not being anything the last hundred years had built.

Lila got there first, claimed a booth in the corner, ordered two of whatever the board recommended.

Brooks arrived a few minutes later, still in civilian clothes, sliding into the seat across from her with the same measured ease she carried into everything.

"This place is older than I expected you to pick," Brooks said, glancing around at the exposed brick, the low light.

"I like things that survived on their own terms," Lila said, sliding one glass across the table. "Figured you’d appreciate the same thing."

Brooks took a sip, considered it, nodded once.

"Not bad," she said. "So. Eclipse. You’re back on the roster properly now?"

"Officially, yeah," Lila said. "Feels strange saying it out loud. Feels stranger than I expected, honestly."

"How’s Kelvin’s engineering these days, still terrifying everyone with things that shouldn’t work but do?"

"Worse than ever," Lila said, and something easy crossed her face for a second, real. "Diana’s kept him mostly functional. Mostly."

They fell into it for a while, comfortable, the kind of catching up that happened between two people who’d genuinely liked each other once. Brooks asked about the faction’s new recruits, about the training bay renovations, about whether the streams were still as relentless as they’d always been. Lila answered easy, laughed twice, and for a stretch it looked like the whole evening might just stay there.

Then Lila set her glass down and didn’t pick it back up.

"There’s something I’ve owed you for four years," she said.

Brooks went still.

"The interschool competition," Lila said. "The Purge attack. Students died. Some of them your own class."

"I know what happened," Brooks said, careful now.

"I was the mole," Lila said. "Not one of my classmates. Me. I was placed in your class specifically. Reported everything back. I was the reason the attack knew exactly where and when to hit." She held Brooks’s eyes without flinching. "I never said sorry to you directly. Not once. I told Noah, eventually, and the rest of the team, and that felt like enough at the time. It wasn’t. You were the one whose class it happened under. Whose judgment got questioned for letting someone like me sit in your room for years without catching it."

Brooks didn’t say anything for a long moment.

"I know how something like that reads inside a military structure," Lila said. "Oversight. Vetting failure. I’m sure it followed you somewhere, even quietly."

Brooks let out a short laugh, though it didn’t carry much humor in it now.

"There was no blowback," she said. "If anything I got moved up, ended up teaching the Vanguard division in space not long after. Academy Twelve took the institutional heat, held itself responsible for the vetting gap, tightened everything after. I came out the other side of it mostly untouched." She studied Lila for a second. "I always wondered if you’d ever actually say it out loud."

"Took me long enough," Lila said.

"It did," Brooks said, and there was something almost gentle underneath the flatness of it. "But you said it."

They sat in that for a moment, the bar’s low hum filling the space around them.

"Can I ask you something," Brooks said eventually. "How’d you actually manage it. Turning your old friends’ hands, getting them to trust you again, letting you back into something they left an entire military institution to build."

Lila considered the question, turning her glass slowly.

"Honestly," she said, "I still feel like I’m earning it. Every day. Nobody just hands that back to you." She looked up. "My real strength through all of it’s been Noah. My boyfriend. Who happens to also be Angel’s, Sera’s, and Sophie’s boyfriend, in case that context matters."

Brooks smiled slightly. "Something tells me you’re still not thrilled to share Eclipse with anyone."

Lila laughed, easy at first.

"No," she said. "Far from it. Eclipse is too big for one person anyway."

Then she stopped smiling.

"Or isn’t that why you left your cushy little post in space," she said, "teaching what the military calls its golden kids, and came all the way down here to be what. A war veteran passing on wisdom to grateful faction members?" She tilted her head. "Or maybe it’s for a guy who happens to summon dragons."

Brooks’s expression went still.

"Sorry?" she said.

"Please," Lila said, leaning forward slightly, voice dropping into something sharper. "It’s written all over you. You can’t wait for him to come back. This whole happy to serve, happy to teach, happy to be part of something bigger act, it’s all running on the same current. Noah."

"That’s a hell of an accusation," Brooks said, voice level, but something had gone tight around her eyes.

"It’s not an accusation," Lila said. "It’s an observation. You could’ve left with him a long time ago, when he invoked Article 47, when he walked out of the EDF for good. You didn’t. And now, suddenly, the second he’s actually gone and everyone’s scattered, here you are, showing up at the door." She shrugged, cold. "From where I’m sitting, Noah’s become the walking, talking symbol of a successful man. And every woman, OLD and young, wants a taste."

Brooks set her glass down slow, deliberate.

"I don’t know what’s actually going on with you," she said, "but I’m going to say this once, and I need you to actually hear it. I know your history, Lila. Unstable. Unpredictable. A live wire that couldn’t be trusted to stay pointed the right direction, back when I still had a say in what happened to cadets like you." She held Lila’s eyes without blinking. "When I heard Eclipse let you back in, I told myself it meant you’d done real work on yourself. That you’d earned it the hard way, the way people actually do."

"And now?" Lila said, still smiling.

"Now I think I gave you too much credit," Brooks said, standing, pulling her phone to transfer a few credits and scanning the receipt on a scanner on the table. "Many are mad. Few are roaming."

She walked out without looking back.

Lila sat there a moment, alone, the low bar noise settling back around her.

Then she smiled, wide, easy, genuinely pleased with herself, and reached for her drink.

***

Brooks walked back into faction headquarters with her jaw tight, nodding stiffly at whoever called her name, "Miss Brooks," "hey, Commander," moving through the lobby fast enough that most people didn’t get more than the nod before she’d already passed.

Up on the observation deck above, Kelvin, Diana, Sophie, and Seraleth watched the whole thing through the reinforced glass.

"Well," Kelvin said, arms crossed. "Good news is Brooks doesn’t look happy. Whatever that meeting was, it went badly enough that we can probably rule her out as a collaborator."

"Small mercies," Diana said.

They peeled off toward Kelvin’s lab, the door hissing shut behind them, and inside, a dozen floating screens filled the back wall, a rendered human body slowly rotating, cellular structures magnified and layered with void energy overlays, half of it crossed out in red, notes scrawled in Kelvin’s shorthand across the margins.

"Sorry we haven’t been much help with this," Sophie said, looking at the screens. "You’ve basically been carrying it alone."

"You’ve all had your own fires to put out," Kelvin said, not looking up from the display he was adjusting. "But whatever I actually need, when I need it, I’m counting on all of you being there. That’s the deal."

"Always," Diana said.

Seraleth was quiet for a moment, arms wrapped around herself.

"This whole thing feels wrong," she said finally. "All of it. I wish Noah were here right now."

"He’s not," Diana said, a little sharp.

"I know he’s not," Seraleth said. "I’m just saying, if he were, he’d walk straight up to Lila and ask her flat out what’s going on. That’s what he’d do."

"Did you listen to anything we talked about in the last meeting," Diana said, turning to face her fully.

"Babe," Kelvin said, stepping in gently, one hand up. "Let me take this."

Diana exhaled and sat back against the edge of the workbench. "Right. Sorry."

Kelvin turned to Seraleth. "We’re not doing the straightforward thing because Lila’s already given us a reason not to trust the straightforward thing. She lied to our faces, in the lobby, about where she’d been. I know exactly where she went, because I tracked her there myself before any of us even landed in the Amazon. She said family stuff. It wasn’t family stuff." He kept his voice level, patient. "That’s probable cause, Sera. Not a feeling. An actual lie, confirmed, sitting right next to a history that already includes her working as a mole once before. We’re not going to walk up and ask her straight out, because if there’s any chance she’s compromised again, tipping our hand does nothing but give her time to cover whatever she’s actually doing."

Seraleth’s shoulders dropped slightly. "I get it. I just hate this. I hate not trusting her."

"None of us like it," Sophie said quietly.

"Speaking of which," Sophie said, straightening. "There’s something I want to tell you all."

The lab door slid open.

"Hey," Lila said, stepping in. "Y’all having a meeting without me?"

Every face in the room did the same thing at once, a flicker, a stillness, a fraction of a second too long before anyone answered.

Lila leaned against the wall near the door, arms loosely crossed, waiting.

"What’s going on," she said.

"Oh, nothing major," Sophie said, recovering fastest. "We were talking about maybe sending a party out to Raiju. Check on Lucas."

"Yeah," Lila said, nodding. "He needs us. But honestly, I’m sure he’s doing fine with his family around. If there’s anywhere in the galaxy safer, more advanced, better equipped than Raiju, I don’t know where it’d be."

"That’s basically where we landed too," Diana said.

"If you all end up going, though," Lila said, "I think I’ll stay grounded. Space travel makes me sick, always has. And I’ve been gone a while. I’d rather get back to earning my keep. Pick up some contracts, get my hands dirty again."

An alarm blared through the lab.

Kelvin’s workstation flickered, every floating screen switching at once, the cellular renderings replaced by a scrolling grid of energy readouts across the Eastern Cardinal.

"What is that," Sophie said.

Kelvin was already pulling data closer, eyes scanning fast. "Not sure yet. But there’s a massive draw happening on the eastern grid. Like, catastrophically massive."

"Why does that matter to us," Diana said. "Power surges happen."

"Not like this," Kelvin said. "Three years ago, when Kruel first hit this Cardinal, killed close to five million people, the technology behind the portal he came through pulled an energy signature almost identical to this. I flagged it, I missed catching it in time back then, and I’ve had a passive monitor running on that exact signature ever since, just in case something ever tried it again."

Nobody let him finish.

"Purge," they said, almost together.