Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner Chapter 856: Arrogance and Desperation; A bad mix

Lila let herself be pulled into the room, Sophie’s grip still tight on her collar, and when she finally spoke her voice came out rough, scraped raw from smoke or grief or both.

"It didn’t start the way you think," she said. "Weeks ago, I went after a Purge warehouse. Alone. I never told any of you because I didn’t think it would lead anywhere, I thought it was just intel gathering, low risk." She swallowed hard. "Kelvin’s tracker caught me there. And once I was inside, they recognized me. Agent Rowe. Turns out that name still meant something to people I didn’t expect to still care."

"That’s how it started," Diana said flatly. "Keep going."

"They didn’t kill me. They took me off-world instead, to some mining operation, somewhere I still don’t have coordinates for even now. And that’s where I actually saw my parents. First time in years." Her voice wavered. "They told me things. Arthur’s alive, which you already know now. That the Sterlings and Grey forces failed against One before the General stepped in and actually hurt him. And then they gave me a job. Unfinished business, they called it. The academies. All twelve, if I could manage it, but especially the ones tied to what happened four years ago at Twelve specifically. Proof, they said. Proof I actually meant it when I said I wanted back in. Proof I wasn’t just performing loyalty from a safe distance."

"And that was the price of being let back into your family," Sophie said, voice hard.

"That was the price of being let back into anything they’d trust me with." Lila’s jaw tightened. "Not just family. Whatever they’re actually building now. The ’grand plan,’ they called it, wouldn’t say more than that."

"And you agreed," Brooks said.

"I agreed to look like I was agreeing." Lila shook her head hard. "I never intended to actually level twelve academies for them, Brooks, I’m not that far gone. But I couldn’t just refuse either, not outright, not without them wondering exactly how loyal my newfound distance from them actually was. So I told myself I’d play the part long enough to get close to whatever they’re planning next, long enough to actually be useful to all of you instead of just another liability you kept at arm’s length."

"You still could have told us," Sophie said. "Any version of the truth. Even a partial version. Instead you lied to our faces, twice, about something this size."

"I know." Lila’s voice cracked. "I know that now."

"Why," Diana pressed. "Actually explain it. Don’t just say sorry."

Lila was quiet a long moment, something breaking further behind her already ruined composure.

"Because I was scared," she said finally. "Not of you. Of them. They put dark chi in my head once already, back when I was still a mole at Academy Twelve, years ago. High-level chi masters, both of them, more advanced than anyone I’ve fought since, and I still don’t fully know what they actually did to me that first time. I’ve spent every day since wondering if there’s something sitting dormant in my own skull that I can’t detect myself, waiting for a trigger I won’t see coming." She wrapped both arms around herself. "I thought if I told any of you, and it turned out I really was compromised in some way even I couldn’t feel, I’d be handing them a weapon aimed straight at the people I actually care about. I told myself I could handle it alone, because none of you fully trusted me anyway, so why would confiding in you change anything except give you one more reason to lock me up permanently."

"So why tell us now," Diana asked. "After all this. What actually changed."

Lila let out a broken, humorless breath. "Because today made it clear. My parents never actually trusted me either. Not really. Same as this team never fully trusted me. I spent weeks trying to prove myself to people on both sides who’d already decided who I was long before I ever opened my mouth to explain."

"So what did you actually do instead of the mission they gave you," Brooks asked, arms crossed, voice hard.

"I worked with Anng," Lila said. "For weeks. Had to vet him first, make sure he wasn’t already compromised, because the last time the Purge hit an academy, Commander Albright was already inside, already turned, and nobody caught it until people were already dead. I wasn’t going to trust blindly a second time. Once I was sure of him, we started preparing students. A small group, martial arts track, kids he already trusted with his own life. Taught them dark chi, defensively, enough that if this day ever actually came, they’d stand a real chance instead of none at all."

"What stupid, reckless goal was that supposed to accomplish," Sophie said, voice shaking with fury now. "The Purge still attacked. Five academies are gone, Lila. Gone. Hundreds dead. Whatever you thought you were preparing for clearly wasn’t enough."

"Not everything," Kelvin said quietly, and every head in the room turned toward him.

He gestured at the screen behind him, and the footage resolved into grainy academy surveillance, timestamped from hours earlier. Lila, unmistakable even through the poor resolution, moving in tight coordination with a cluster of students in white gis, red-white energy crackling between them as they drove back a wave of Purge operatives at the academy’s main gate, students fighting in formation, wounded but standing, holding a line that should never have held against trained adult combatants.

"Sophie," Kelvin said, voice steady. "It looks like she’s telling the truth. Academy Twelve is the only one that survived intact. That’s not luck. That’s exactly what she just described."

Lila’s shoulders shook. "I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Not like this. Not five academies burning while I saved one."

"In the end," Sophie said, voice flat and hard, "your selfishness. Your need to prove everyone wrong on your own terms, without a single person in this room knowing what you were actually doing. That still got people killed, Lila. Hundreds of people. If you’d confided in any one of us, even just Kelvin, even just me, we could have warned every academy properly, not just the one you happened to be standing in."

"I know." Lila’s voice broke completely now, tears spilling fast. "I know that. I made a mistake. A horrible, unforgivable mistake."

"You wanted access back into your parents’ lives," Sophie pressed, relentless now. "Say it plainly. That’s what this was actually about, wasn’t it. Not just avoiding the mission. Getting close to whatever they’re building next."

"Yes." Lila’s whole body shook with the admission. "I knew they were planning something bigger, something none of us have the full shape of yet, and they wouldn’t let me anywhere near it unless I proved myself first. I thought if I played their game long enough, I could get close enough to actually end it. All of it. Arthur, One, everything that’s ever come out of that bloodline. I thought I was the only one positioned to do that."

"Hero complex," Diana said, disgusted. "That’s exactly what this is. You know what this reminds me of? Vanguard, years ago, when Noah and Kelvin decided they knew something the rest of us didn’t and acted on it without telling anyone. That decision almost got every single one of us killed. If you claim to be part of this team, Lila, you act like it. You don’t get to unilaterally decide what the rest of us can handle knowing."

"She’s right," Brooks said, voice cold and precise. "And you know what makes this worse? You never finished your academy training. Three full years, that’s what it takes, that’s what the rest of us who didn’t ditch or get fast-tracked to Vanguard actually sat through, learning the discipline, the protocols, the reason those systems exist in the first place. Maybe if you had, some of this instinct to run solo operations without oversight would’ve been trained out of you before it ever got the chance to cost lives like this."

"That’s not fair," Kelvin started.

"It’s completely fair," Brooks snapped. "I sat through those years, Kelvin. I know exactly what they’re meant to teach. Restraint. Chain of command. The understanding that you are never the only person capable of solving a problem, no matter how badly you want to believe you are." She turned back to Lila. "You skipped straight past all of that and went right into thinking you alone could fix something this size. That’s not bravery. That’s exactly the kind of arrogance that gets people killed."

Sera, quiet until now, finally spoke, and her voice carried none of its usual softness.

"I defended you," she said, something genuinely wounded behind the words. "In that cell. To Diana. To everyone. I told them your story fit the facts, that you deserved the benefit of doubt none of us were giving you." She shook her head slowly. "I do not regret believing people deserve chances. I regret that you used the chance I fought to give you to keep lying, right up until people had already died for it."

"I’m sorry," Lila whispered.

"Sorry doesn’t undo five academies," Diana said.

"I know that." Lila’s voice cracked entirely now, sobs breaking through what little composure she had left. "I know sorry doesn’t fix any of it. I let the fear of what my parents might have done to me, what they might still be able to do to me, get so far into my head that I couldn’t make the right call. I told myself I was protecting all of you by keeping it quiet, and really I was just protecting myself from having to admit I might already be broken in some way I couldn’t fix."

Kelvin crossed the room slowly, and rested a hand on her shoulder for a moment, not saying anything, just present, before he stepped back and walked out without a word, jaw tight, clearly needing distance more than he needed to speak.

The room sat in the wreckage of it for a long moment, nobody quite ready to be the next voice.

Lila broke down fully then, crying in a way that had no performance left in it at all, shoulders shaking, both hands pressed hard against her own face.

Sophie watched her a long moment, fury still burning somewhere underneath, but something else moving alongside it now, something that looked, despite everything, almost like grief for exactly what this had cost all of them, Lila included.

She crossed the room and pulled Lila into a hug, tight, unyielding, stopping the worst of the shaking with sheer physical presence.

"What the Purge did today," Sophie said, quiet now, steady, "cannot go unanswered. Not this time. Not after this."

Lila’s breath hitched against her shoulder.

"We dealt with Kruel," Sophie continued. "It’s time we extend the same judgment to the Purge itself. Your parents. Mine. Whatever’s left of Arthur’s whole rotten network." She pulled back, holding Lila by both shoulders now, eyes hard and certain despite the tears still standing in her own. "And you’re going to help, Lila."