Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 838: Civil war

Sophie burst out of the call room so fast the door nearly caught Kelvin in the shoulder behind her.

"Whoa, hey—" He caught himself against the frame, jogging to keep pace. "Sophie, where are you going?"

"Purge wants something with Lucas," Sophie said, not slowing down, cutting through the corridor fast enough that two junior members flattened against the wall to let her pass. "My parents just walked onto Raiju under EDF cover, posing as healers, claiming they’ve got a treatment for him. And the only person in this building who might actually know why the Purge cares about him specifically is down the hall right now, pretending she doesn’t."

"You think Lila knows what they’re after."

"Her parents are Purge. Founding-level Purge. If anyone here has an instinct for what they’d want with Lucas, it’s her." Sophie rounded the corner hard. "And she’s already lied to us twice this week about where she’s been. I want answers, Kelvin. Not more coincidences."

"That’s still a leap, Sophie, knowing her parents’ organization doesn’t automatically mean she knows this specific—"

"Then she can tell me that herself."

She hit Lila’s door and didn’t knock.

Lila looked up from her bed, one earbud in, unbothered in a way that made something in Sophie’s chest tighten immediately.

"Can I help you," Lila said, pulling the earbud out slow.

"Where did you go." Sophie’s voice came out sharper than she meant it to. "That day. You told us family stuff. Then you told us a friend’s mother. Which one was it, Lila, because it wasn’t either."

"I already answered this."

"You didn’t answer anything, you gave us two different lies and expected us to just pick whichever one sounded less suspicious."

Lila stood, unhurried, arms loose at her sides. "Wow. Okay. Good afternoon to you too."

"Don’t do that."

"Do what?"

"That." Sophie gestured at her, at the whole unbothered posture. "Act like I’m the one being unreasonable right now."

"I mean, you did burst into my room without knocking, so."

"Because I have Kelvin’s tracker data pulled up from that day, Lila, and it puts you at a Purge facility. Not a friend’s house. Not family stuff. A Purge facility." Sophie’s hands curled at her sides. "So either you tell me right now what you were doing there, or you can explain it to Angel’s people instead."

Something flickered across Lila’s face, there and gone.

"Fine." She exhaled, dragging a hand back through her hair. "Fine, yes. I went somewhere I didn’t tell you about. I have reasons. Real ones. I can’t explain them yet, not until it’s done, and I know exactly how that sounds coming out of my mouth—"

"Then don’t say it, show me. What’s the reason."

"I can’t."

"Can’t, or won’t."

"Does it matter which?" Lila’s voice climbed for the first time, something raw slipping under the calm. "You’ve already decided I’m guilty of something, Sophie, I can see it on your face, so what exactly am I supposed to say here that changes that?"

"You could try the truth."

"I am giving you the truth, you just don’t like the way and manner it comes in!"

"The shape it comes in is you disappearing for weeks, lying about it twice, and turning up on a tracker at a Purge site." Sophie’s voice cracked with the effort of keeping it level. "Forgive me if I need more than ’trust me’ after everything you’ve already put this team through once."

"Once." Lila’s laugh came out short and humorless. "Right. Once. And I’ve spent every day since paying for that once, haven’t I, every mission you quietly reroute me out of, every time somebody’s eyes flick to the door when I walk into a room—"

"That’s not fair."

"No, it’s not, is it." Lila stepped closer, jaw tight. "Funny how fair only ever seems to apply one direction in this conversation."

Kelvin lingered in the doorway, catching the tail end of it, wincing.

"Okay, hey, can we maybe—"

"Not now, Kelvin."

"I’m just saying, maybe we lower the volume a little before—"

"Kelvin." Sophie didn’t look away from Lila. "Not now."

He held both hands up and backed off half a step, clearly deciding that wading in further right now would cost him a limb.

Lila crossed her arms. "You want to know something? I actually thought, for a while, that we were past this. That you’d actually let me back in, properly, not just as someone you tolerated because Noah vouched for me. Guess that was optimistic."

"I let you back in because Noah trusted you," Sophie said. "That doesn’t mean I stopped watching."

"No kidding,"

Diana’s voice cut through before either of them could go further, sharp and already annoyed from three doors down. "What is going on in here, I can hear you two down the hall—"

She stepped into the doorway, took one look at the room, the postures, the tension thick enough to cut, and her whole face hardened.

"Oh, for God’s sake." She crossed her arms, glaring at Lila like she’d been waiting years for exactly this moment. "You know what, I called this. Three years ago, when we let you back into this faction, I said it out loud, on record, this girl is a liability and a wild card, and everyone looked at me like I was being paranoid."

"Diana—" Kelvin started.

"No, I’m not done." Diana’s finger jabbed toward Lila. "This is an organization that deals with people’s actual lives, Lila. Real ones. Not games, not personal side projects you get to run without telling your own chain of command. Insubordination in an outfit like this isn’t a personality quirk, it gets people killed, and you answer to Sophie, full stop, in Noah and Lucas’s absence, that’s not up for negotiation."

"I wasn’t aware I needed a permission slip to have a private life," Lila said.

"You lost the right to a private life the day you lied to our faces about where you’d been." Sophie blurted.

Lila’s eyes moved over Sophie then, slow, deliberate, head to foot.

"You know what’s funny," she said. "Your parents burned exactly as badly as mine did, Sophie. Same betrayal, same stain, same Nexus arena. And somehow you get to stand there, judge, jury, chain of command, while I’m the one who has to answer for existing."

"Because I actually condemned mine," Sophie shot back. "Publicly. To their faces. I told them if I ever saw either of them again, I’d kill them myself, and I meant it. That’s the difference, Lila. I burned the bridge down. You’ve just been quietly walking back and forth across yours."

Lila’s jaw tightened, something dangerous flickering behind her eyes, hands curling slowly at her sides.

"Careful," Diana muttered, catching it too.

Kelvin stepped fully between them this time, hands raised, genuine desperation cracking through his usual deflecting humor.

"Okay. Okay, everyone, please, just, breathe for one second, because I do not want my fiancée and two of my best friends’ girlfriends going at each other’s throats in a bedroom, this is not how any of us pictured today going, and I don’t think shouting is actually going to fix—"

"Then say something useful," Sophie snapped.

Kelvin exhaled hard, shoulders dropping.

"Fine." He looked between all of them. "News just reached us. Sophie’s parents are on Raiju. Got in using EDF cover through Hendricks, claiming they’ve got a cure for Lucas."

Diana’s arms uncrossed, shock breaking clean through her anger. "What?"

Lila’s face changed too, and it wasn’t performance, Sophie could see that immediately, something honestly thrown behind her eyes for the first time since they’d walked in.

"Wait," Lila said. "What?"

Sophie stared at her. "You don’t know, do you." Almost surprised at her own voice saying it.

Kelvin caught it in the same breath. "She doesn’t know." He looked at Sophie, something shifting in his own expression. "Which means whatever’s happening on Raiju, it’s not her doing. Somebody’s moving without her, or around her. See this is why I said we should all calm down,"

Sera appeared at the edge of the doorway then, drawn by the noise same as Diana had been, hair still slightly damp from wherever she’d come from, wingless, glancing between all four of them with open confusion.

"What did I miss?"

"A lot," Diana said grimly, and gave her the short, ugly version in four clipped sentences.

Lila had gone very still through all of it, jaw tight, something working hard behind her expression that none of them could quite name.

"Guys, come on." Kelvin looked between them, genuinely pleading now. "This is Lila. Maybe she’s not, I don’t know, back to being the evil queen her mommy and daddy always wanted her to grow up to be. Can we at least entertain that possibility before we go full lockdown on her?"

Nobody answered. Nobody took their eyes off Lila either.

"She our friend, right? I mean she’s friend," Kelvin pressed on, voice rising slightly with the effort of being ignored. "Genuinely, actually my friend, not just someone I tolerate because Noah likes her, no offense Lila," he apologized briefly.

"And not to mention, she’s Noah’s girlfriend, which means, in his absence, I’ve got some kind of duty to actually look out for her instead of just standing here watching everyone build a case against her in real time. That’s not nothing to me."

Still nothing. Diana’s stance didn’t shift. Sera’s eyes stayed locked on Lila. Sophie didn’t even glance his way.

Kelvin’s shoulders dropped, the plea dying out unanswered in the silence that followed.

Lila’s mouth curved, slow and humorless.

"Whatever," she said finally, voice gone flat and cold. "Since apparently I’m the villain in this house no matter what I actually do, and everyone’s been quietly building a case file on me while pretending to still be my friends, I’ll just go."

She moved for the door.

Sophie stepped into her path.

"You’re not leaving."

"Move."

"You’re a security risk, Lila. To this faction. To people I love. I can’t let you walk out that door."

Lila’s mouth curved into a smile, slow and far too wide for the moment.

"Reign," she said. "You might want to move."

Sophie’s own smile came up cold to match it.

"Make me, Rowe."

The air between them went taut, and Kelvin lunged one more time into the gap, hands out.

"Guys, seriously, there is no need for—"

Diana stepped up beside Sophie without a word, shield already forming. Sera moved to the other side a heartbeat later, wings unfurling with a soft rustle of light folding into feathers.

Lila looked at the three of them, blocking her only way out, and her smile stretched wider, something unhinged creeping fast into the edges of it now.

"You have to stay," Sophie said. "Until we sort this out."

Lila’s hand came up.

The world stopped.

Not slowed. Stopped entirely, Sophie’s next breath caught mid-draw, Diana’s shield fragments frozen mid-orbit, Sera’s wings locked at full spread, Kelvin’s raised hand suspended in the exact shape of his last gesture.

Lila walked between them at a leisurely pace, smiling at each frozen face in turn, close enough to touch Sophie’s cheek as she passed and not quite doing it.

"Cute," she said, to no one who could hear her. "Really."

She walked out.

The stasis broke a few minutes later, all at once, everyone lurching back into motion mid-breath, mid-gesture, and the doorway stood empty.

Sophie’s jaw clenched.

"Find her!"

They scattered through the halls, Diana and Sera breaking off toward the west wing, Sophie and Kelvin heading for the command center.

"Kelvin, cameras, now."

"Sophie, maybe we should just let her—"

"Now, Kelvin."

He sighed but complied, dropping into a station beside two of the faction’s own technopaths, fingers already moving across three separate interfaces at once, feeds pulling up faster than any of them could track individually.

"There." Sophie pointed at a small window in the corner of the array, a blonde figure moving fast through a service corridor. "Hangar bay. She’s going for a ship."

They ran.

They reached the hangar in time to see Lila crossing toward a docked transport, and she slowed when she caught sight of them fanning out to block the exit, Diana’s Shoal Shield already orbiting bright around her forearm, Sera’s wings spread wide and tense, Sophie’s mace forming in a slow bloom of violet light.

Lila scoffed, spreading her hands.

"Okay," she said. "So that’s how it is."

POOOFF!!!

Something hissed through the air behind her.

A dart caught her high in the shoulder, and she stumbled, hand flying up to yank it free, a small vial already empty in her fingers by the time she turned to find the source.

Kelvin stood a few meters back, one arm still extended, expression carved out of something between grief and resolve.

Lila stared at him.

"You," she managed.

Kelvin shook his head slowly. "I’m sorry."

Her knees buckled a heartbeat later, and she went down before anyone could reach her, unconscious before she hit the floor.

"Kelvin!" Sophie’s voice cracked across the hangar.

He didn’t answer. He just turned and walked off toward the exit, shoulders tight, voice trailing back over his shoulder, flat and tired.

"Just put her somewhere safe. Treat her with some respect. Please."