Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 841: Past regrets

Lila sat against the far wall of the cell when they found her, knees drawn up loose rather than defensive, watching the four of them file in through the barrier’s pale blue hum like she’d been expecting exactly this many people and no fewer.

Sophie stopped just short of the light.

"We need to talk."

"So talk." Lila didn’t move from the wall. Didn’t stand, didn’t posture, just sat there with the particular stillness of someone who’d already decided how tired she was going to let herself look. "Or is this the part where you all stand there staring at me like I’m already something dead. Like a body you’re deciding how to bury."

"Nobody thinks that."

"Diana does."

"I think you’re a risk." Diana stepped forward before Sophie could answer for her, and something about the way she said it landed heavier than the words themselves, like she’d been holding the sentence in her mouth the whole walk down. "That’s what I think. I think you lied to us twice, easily, smoothly, like you’d rehearsed it. And Sophie’s own parents just tried to gut a friend of ours or harm him in ways I don’t know yet. And this person is someone who can’t so much as lift a finger to defend himself. And I think you knew something, anything, and sat on it while the rest of us walked around completely blind to it."

"I didn’t know anything about Raiju."

"So you say."

"So I say, yeah, because it happens to be true." Lila’s voice climbed for the first time, sharp enough that Sera flinched slightly beside Kelvin. "You think I’d sit here calm as anything if I’d known Sophie’s parents were flying halfway across known space to open Lucas up in his sleep? You think that’s a thing I’d just quietly let happen and say nothing about, Diana? After everything?"

"I don’t know what you’d do anymore." Diana’s arms stayed crossed, tight, like she was physically holding something back. "That used to be an easy answer. It’s not anymore. That’s the whole problem, in case you hadn’t noticed."

"Lucas is my friend. He is on my team." Lila stood now, slow, pressing close enough to the barrier that the light caught the hard line of her jaw. "Someone I’ve bled next to. Someone I actually care about whether any single one of you chooses to believe that or not. You think I don’t feel sick over how close they got to him? You think I’ve been sitting in here feeling fine about any of this?"

"Then why the secrecy," Sophie said, quieter, cutting through before it could escalate further, though her own voice wasn’t entirely steady either. "Where did you actually go. The real version. Not family stuff. Not a friend’s mother. The truth, Lila, all the way through, or don’t bother."

Lila went quiet a moment.

It stretched longer than any of them expected, long enough that Kelvin shifted his weight twice, long enough that Sera’s eyes moved between Lila and Sophie like she was tracking something invisible passing between them. When Lila finally spoke, something in her whole posture had shifted, the sharp edges rounding off into something closer to exhaustion, or a very good performance of it.

"Fine." She exhaled, long, like she was setting something heavy down. "I went to the facility. The tracker’s right about that much. I’m not going to insult any of you by denying what you’ve already got proof of sitting right there on a screen somewhere." She wrapped both arms around herself, an old habit, something she’d probably done a thousand times as a kid without anyone around to notice or care. "From there, they took me off-world. Don’t know exactly where. Transport had the windows blacked out the entire way, which, fun fact nobody asked for, is a genuinely excellent way to make a person feel like cargo instead of family."

"To meet your parents," Sophie said.

"That was the idea. Supposedly." Lila’s jaw tightened, something flickering behind her eyes too fast to name. "Didn’t happen, though. Whatever they actually wanted out of me, it wasn’t a tender reunion around a dinner table. I sat in a room for days. Nobody explained a single thing. And then someone finally walked in and told me I wasn’t ready yet, whatever that’s even supposed to mean, and put me straight back on a transport home like a returned package."

"You expect us to believe that," Diana said.

"I don’t expect anything from you specifically anymore, Diana. Gave up on that a while back, if I’m honest." Lila’s voice had gone flat now, tired instead of sharp. "I expect you to believe whatever you’d already decided the second that tracker data came back. That’s fine. I’m used to it."

"That’s not fair," Kelvin said, quiet, the first thing he’d managed to get out since they’d arrived.

"No. It’s really not." Lila almost laughed, the sound catching somewhere in her throat and dying before it fully formed. "But when has that ever mattered."

"None of it explains why you didn’t just tell us," Sophie pressed. "Any of it. Before now. Before we had to drag it out of you piece by piece like this."

"Because you’d already made up your minds the second that data came back, Sophie, come on, don’t act surprised by that." Lila’s eyes moved across all of them, one at a time, deliberate. "You think I didn’t notice? The way people’s eyes flick to the door the second I walk into a room lately. The way missions get quietly rerouted around me without anyone ever saying why out loud, like I wouldn’t eventually put it together myself. I’ve been feeling that for a long time now. Longer than any of you probably realize."

"What does that mean," Sophie said.

Lila let out a short laugh, humorless, brittle around the edges.

"You want to know something genuinely funny? Noah did this to me first. Before any of this. Before the facility, before any of it happened. Told me I couldn’t come on the One mission because he was worried it would, what was his exact word, open something back up for me." Her voice cracked on the last part, the flatness finally splintering into something rawer. "Like I’m a wound that never healed properly. Like I need managing instead of trusting. And the worst part, the actual worst part, is I never even got to talk to him about it after. The second I got back, he was already gone, off chasing One somewhere I can’t even reach to say, hey. That hurt. That actually really hurt, and you didn’t even stick around long enough to hear it."

"So this is about Noah," Diana said.

"This is about all of you." Some heat came back into it now, real heat. "This is about spending months feeling like everyone in this building already decided I’m unstable, or insane, or one bad day away from turning back into the villain I used to be, and getting so tired of proving otherwise to people who weren’t actually listening in the first place, not really, just waiting for the next piece of evidence to confirm what they’d already decided."

"Convenient timing, though," Diana said, though something in her own voice had started to waver, just slightly, just enough that Sera caught it. "Your excuse lines up exactly when we needed real answers most."

"There’s no convenient version of Sophie’s parents attacking Lucas, Diana. None of this is convenient for me. Do you actually think I want to sit here explaining my whole personal history to a room full of people pointing fingers while my boyfriend’s brother figure lies in a cryo chamber someone’s own family just tried to reach?" Lila’s voice cracked properly now, no performance left in it, or none Sophie could detect anyway. "I have spent years trying to become something other than what my parents built me to be. And every single time something like this happens, all of you look at me like maybe I never actually changed. Like the last several years were just a very long, very convincing act."

Sera’s expression had softened through all of it, her whole posture leaning toward Lila now instead of away, some old protective instinct kicking in that even she seemed slightly surprised by.

"I told you," Sera said quietly, glancing sideways at Diana.

"You told me a theory."

"A theory that fits every fact we currently have."

"It fits some of them. Convenient absence, convenient explanation, convenient timing stacked on top of more convenient timing—"

"Enough." Sophie’s voice cut clean through both of them, sharper than she’d meant it to come out, and the room actually went quiet around it.

She stood there a long moment, looking at Lila through the barrier’s soft hum, something working behind her own expression that none of them, not even Kelvin who knew her best, could fully read.

"If you’re telling the truth," Sophie said slowly, testing each word before committing to the next, "then locking you up while my parents were actively attacking Lucas was exactly the wrong call, and I need to actually sit with that, uncomfortable as it is. And if you’re lying to me right now, if this whole thing is a very good performance, then Lucas nearly died today partly because we wasted time we didn’t have arguing amongst ourselves instead of moving." She exhaled, long and unsteady. "Either way. Keeping you in a cell isn’t helping anyone actually figure out which version is true. It’s just delaying the moment we find out."

"Sophie," Diana said, warning threaded through it.

"I heard you."

"Did you? Because it sounds like you’re about to let her walk right out of here."

"I am."

"After everything we just said. After Raiju. After watching Lucas nearly die in his sleep."

"Because of Raiju," Sophie said, turning to face her fully now. "If she’d actually known something and we’d had her locked in here instead of just talking to her like this, we’d have lost time we genuinely couldn’t afford to lose. I’m not making that mistake twice, Diana. Not with something this size."

"This isn’t the same situation and you know it isn’t."

"Maybe it’s not. I’m making the call anyway."

Diana stared at her for a long beat, jaw working, and then threw both hands up, more frustrated than truly angry now, something resigned bleeding through underneath it. "Fine. Fine, let her out. But I want it on record, right now, in front of every single person standing in this room, that I said this was a mistake. If she disappears again, if anything happens because of this decision, I warned all of you first."

"Noted." Sophie’s voice stayed even, though something in her hands, clasped a little too tightly in front of her, suggested it cost her something to keep it that way. "Kelvin."

Kelvin hesitated only a second before crossing to the panel and keying in the release sequence, three quick taps that felt, to Sera at least, disproportionately small for the weight of what they were undoing. The barrier dropped with a soft, almost apologetic hum, and Lila rose slowly, rolling one shoulder like she was testing whether the dart’s effects had fully cleared her system yet.

She looked at each of them in turn as she stepped past the threshold, eyes lingering longest on Kelvin, something flickering there, apology maybe, or something closer to regret, gone again before anyone could be certain which.

"For what it’s worth," she said, stopping directly in front of Sophie, close enough that the space between them felt smaller than the room actually was, "locking me up like that. That was wrong. I’m not saying past me never earned something like this eventually, because she probably did, more than once. But that wasn’t past me you put down here. That was me now. Actually trying. Actually caring what happens to Lucas. And you still treated me like the worst version of myself, because that was easier than trusting the current one."

"Lila—"

"I’m not angry." Something in her tone made it almost believable, almost. "I understand why you did it. I do, genuinely. But I needed to say that out loud before I go, so it’s actually said, not just something I carry around unspoken." She started toward the corridor, paused, glanced back over one shoulder. "I’ll keep in touch. Until Noah’s back, at least. He’s going to want to hear all of this from me directly, and I’d rather he get it from me first than through whatever secondhand version reaches him with everyone else’s spin already baked into it."

She walked out.

The others filed after her slowly, footsteps echoing longer than they should have in a corridor that size, Diana’s jaw still tight enough to ache, Sera trailing close behind Lila with something almost protective in how she positioned herself, Kelvin lingering half a step behind them all, glancing back once toward the empty cell like it might have something more to tell him.

Sophie didn’t follow.

She stayed rooted exactly where she’d been standing, arms wrapped tight around herself now, watching the corridor long after the last set of footsteps had faded into the stairwell above, the pale blue barrier light behind her flickering once, twice, before settling back into its steady, patient hum.

Kelvin noticed she hadn’t followed and doubled back through the doorway.

"You okay?"

Sophie didn’t answer right away. The question seemed to take a moment to actually land, like it had to travel some distance to reach whatever part of her was still processing everything that had just happened.

"Just start it somehow," she said finally, mostly to herself, the words coming out disconnected from anything either of them had actually said in the room. "This whole thing is funny. Confusing even." She rubbed her temple slow, exhaling something unsteady. "King’s Gaze showed me something. A while back. Before any of this ever started."

Kelvin’s expression sharpened immediately, all traces of his earlier hesitance gone. "Showed you what."

"Sera. Dying." Sophie’s voice caught on the word, cracked slightly around its edges. "A Harbinger fight, brutal, something with wings I never fully understood even looking straight at it. And Lila standing right in front of her the whole time. Doing nothing. Just watching it happen like she was waiting for something."

Kelvin went very still, the kind of stillness that meant his mind was already racing even though his body had stopped.

"You never told me or anyone that."

"I didn’t know what to do with it," Sophie admitted, and for the first time since they’d walked down here, something genuinely vulnerable slipped through the composure she’d been holding onto with both hands. "It could’ve been a nightmare. King’s Gaze doesn’t always show the future clean, you know that better than most, sometimes it’s just fear wearing the future’s clothes. I told myself that for weeks. Kept telling myself that right up until an hour ago."

"But."

"But King’s Gaze called Jayden," Sophie said quietly. "Called what happened to Lucas too, close enough that I can’t keep pretending it didn’t. It’s been right every single time it’s shown me something like this. Every time, Kelvin. Not most times. Every time."

Kelvin scratched the back of his head slowly, something working hard behind his eyes, calculations and probabilities and half-formed contingencies all fighting for space at once.

"So." He let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh, more like something trying to escape before it curdled into something worse on the way out. "Did we just make the wrong call. Letting her walk right out of here after everything you just told me."

Sophie stared down the empty corridor, arms still wrapped tight around herself, the weight of everything she hadn’t said finally starting to show through the composure she’d carried through the entire confrontation, cracking now that there was no one left to perform certainty for.

"You know," she said, and a wry, exhausted smile finally broke through despite all of it, despite everything, "it’s moments exactly like this one where I really miss my boyfriend."