Lili sat quietly on the edge of the medical bed, her shadow pooled at her too still, too dark. Margherita’s hands hesitated more than once. She checked Lili’s pulse, her pupils, scanned her body for burns, fractures, shrapnel, but there was nothing. Just flawless and cold skin. Margherita stepped back slowly, her brow furrowing in quiet disbelief. “This… this doesn’t make sense,” she muttered, eyes flicking over Lili again as if the injuries must be hiding somewhere, just out of reach. “You were in the epicenter of a goddamned explosion.”
Lili didn’t meet her eyes. She stared straight ahead, jaw tight, fists clenched on her lap like the memory of pain lingered even if the pain itself had vanished. “I felt it,” she whispered. “The fire. The force. I was there. And then… I wasn’t.”
Margherita’s voice softened, touched with unease. “Lili… what did you do?”
Lili slowly looked down at her trembling hands, still ash-smudged from her own Gift. “I don’t know,” she said, barely more than breath. “I just… vanished into the shadows. And when I came back, I was whole.”
“Please, stay overnight,” Margherita pleaded, her voice uncharacteristically soft, dulled by genuine concern. “I want to observe you. Just in case.”
Lili sighed and sank deeper into the mattress. “Do I have the option to say no?” Her voice was flat with exhaustion.
“No,” Margherita replied simply, a tired smile tugging her lips. “None whatsoever.”
Lili turned her face toward the pillow, her limbs heavy but strangely unburdened. “Happy now?” she asked, her eyes already half-lidded with fatigue.
Margherita nodded, stepping back. “I’ll check on you through the night. Just… rest. That’s all I want from you now.” And with that, she left the room.
Lili let herself breathe, let her bones soften into the blankets—and that’s when she heard a woman’s voice inside her. “You are already one of us, Lili. Soon you will start to understand that.”
Her breath hitched. A chill slid down her spine. That voice… She heard it just before the fire consumed everything: We won’t let you die.
She shivered beneath the sheets. No, she thought. I’m not saying a word. They’ll think I’ve gone mad.
Later, when Margherita returned for the first check-in, she paused at the threshold. Lili lay with her forehead damp, her skin flushed with a fever. Margherita rushed forward, checking her temperature, her pulse.
“What the hell is happening to you, Lili…” she whispered to herself, pressing the cool of her palm to Lili’s burning skin, unaware that somewhere deep inside the girl’s mind, a voice had begun to laugh softly.
In the hush of early morning, Lili stirred. Her eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks, and her breath returned in a slow, hesitant rhythm.
When her eyes finally opened, hazed with sleep and something heavier than fatigue, she found Margherita already there—leaning over her with furrowed brows and fingers pressed gently to her forehead.
The doctor’s eyes betrayed a storm of confusion. “…No fever,” she muttered, half to herself, half to the room. “Last night you were burning up. I thought we’d need to stabilize you. Now…” She stepped back slowly, eyes narrowing in bewildered disbelief. “Now you’re perfectly fine.”
Lili blinked, trying to sit up, her body responding with ease. And that’s when she noticed. Her eyes dropped to her arms. They were pale, but not in the way it was last night. Something else was missing. “Where… where are they?” she whispered.
Margherita looked at her. “Your shadows?” she asked softly. “Gone.”
Lili’s chest rose and fell with a deep, uneven breath, as though each inhale. “I didn’t dream it,” she whispered. “The explosion… the voice… the way I… pulled myself back.”
Across from her, Margherita stilled. Her stethoscope dangled useless at her side now. “The voice?” she repeated, her eyes narrowing with sudden alertness. “Are you hiding something, Lili?”
There was a pause. Lili’s expression stiffened, her muscles pulling into the practiced mask of indifference, but it cracked just slightly at the edges. “Shit…” she muttered under her breath, low enough it might’ve been mistaken for an exhale. “I dreamed something, maybe.” Her tone turned casual too fast and too forced. “Probably just the fever playing with my head. You know how it is.”
She gave a shrug, but her hands fidgeted with the blanket draped across her lap, twisting the edge with restless fingers.
Margherita didn’t press, but her eyes lingered longer than necessary. “Dreams don’t usually come with warnings, Lili,” she said gently, stepping back. “And they don’t usually tear you apart and build you back up either.”
Lili didn’t answer. She only stared ahead, jaw clenched, heart pounding to the rhythm of words she hadn’t spoken aloud: We won’t let you die.
And somewhere in the back of her mind, the voice whispered again. Soon.
“Can I go now?” Lili asked, her voice low, wearied but steady.
Margherita gave a soft nod. “Of course. But before you disappear…” She paused, then pulled her phone from the pocket of her coat. “Go straight to Rafael’s office. He asked to see you as soon as you were well enough. I’ll let him know you’re on your way.”
Lili watched her for a moment how quickly her fingers were typing, the furrow of concentration on the doctor’s face and then, without another word, slid off the bed. Her bare feet touched the cold floor briefly before she found her boots by the wall and slipped them on.
As she reached Rafael’s door, she slowed. She could hear voices inside. Lili raised her hand and knocked once.
“Come in,” Rafael’s voice called immediately.
Lili opened the door and stepped inside.
Rafael stood behind his desk. Mike stood off to the side, arms crossed, his eyes narrowed and fixed on Lili with an intensity.
“Sit, Lili,” Rafael instructed, his voice even.
She did it out of necessity. Her body was still tired.
Without a word, Rafael turned a tablet toward her. The screen flickered, a drone’s-eye view of the ruins of the storage facility. The footage zoomed in on the epicenter—on the moment shadows writhed and coalesced into the shape, a form born not from flesh but darkness, drawing itself back into existence.
“You should be dead,” Rafael said simply, almost softly.
Mike’s voice followed, lower, more cautious. “And that? That was no Gift we’ve seen before.”
Lili didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. Instead, she locked eyes with both of them. “You’re asking the wrong questions,” she said. “You selected a random target from the list I gave you—and they knew we were coming. That bomb wasn’t a misstep. You should check your damn office for a listening device. Or a rat.”
Both men stilled.
Rafael leaned back, frown sharpening. “You’re sure?”
“I was the only one who had to died there. That is clear.”
Mike muttered a curse under his breath and moved toward the wall panel, pressing his hand to a hidden scanner. A steel panel slid open, revealing a locked cabinet filled with equipment. He pulled out a signal sweeper and started scanning the room.
“Notori said the port was fully guarded,” Lili continued. “That means the port was bait. Our side got played.”
Rafael slowly set the tablet down. “If there’s a rat… we’ll find them.”
“I hope so,” she murmured, rising from her seat. “Because if you don’t… next time, it won’t be shadows pulling me back together.”
Without a word her irises melted into yellow, a molten gold flickering with the Gift’s glow.
Eyes sweeping the office. Every object in the room bled a ghostly signature of warmth—Rafael and Mike blazed like stars, but beyond that… nothing. No out-of-place heat, no lingering trails. With a soft grunt, her eyes shifted to storm grey, then blue, then bled into violet, then green. Each color searched in silence, each revealing a different spectrum, a different slice of the unseen and each one gave her nothing.
At last, her gaze faded back to its usual hue, and she let out a long, disappointed sigh. “Sorry,” she murmured, her voice softer now, almost ashamed. “Can’t help you with that.”
Rafael nodded slowly, lips pressed into a tight line. Mike, still pacing the room with a black scanner in hand, didn’t break stride, but Lili noticed the subtle twitch at the corner of his brow, the way his jaw tensed as if grinding down a rising tide of frustration.
“You tried,” Rafael said quietly, his voice a calm anchor in uncertain waters. “That’s more than most ever bother to do.”
Lili offered a small shrug, the gesture laced with silent apology. She turned slightly toward the door, ready to retreat into solitude, when Rafael’s voice pulled her back.
“There are more things we need to discuss,” he said, his gaze flickering toward the ceiling, the walls—suspicion threading his words. “But let’s postpone until we’re sure this space is safe.”
She gave a small nod of agreement and turned on her heel.
But then—
A sharp, sudden beep from Mike’s scanner cracked the air. He reached behind the edge of the bookshelf near Rafael’s desk. And then he pulled it out: a listening device no larger than a thumbnail, black, sleek, and humming faintly. “Found it,” he muttered, holding it up to the light.
Rafael’s expression didn’t change, but Lili felt the cold drop in the room’s temperature. “Told you. It wasn’t random. They wanted me to walk into a fire.”
Mike’s grip on the device tightened until it creaked.
Rafael’s voice was barely above a whisper. “We have a rat.”
Lili met his gaze with that growing storm behind her eyes. “And most likely someone loyal to the people I used to work for,” she said, her tone sharpening with the weight of bitter realization. “They know I gave you that list. That’s why they sent me straight into a trap.”
Her voice cracked from fury. “Fuck.”
Mike stared at the tiny device in his palm like it was a bomb still ticking. Rafael’s fists curled slightly at his sides in that cold, calculating way that meant the damage had already started bleeding into plans and protocols. “You think they know you’re alive?” Rafael asked, quiet and grave.
“If they didn’t before, they do now,” Lili replied.
Mike swore under his breath and tossed the device onto the desk.
Rafael didn’t speak for a long moment. Then, he turned to Mike. “Strip every meeting room. Find every bug. We will hunt the traitor.”
Lili exhaled slowly, her breath trembling with the heat of barely held wrath.
“Then let me help. If it’s someone from my past… I want to be the one who finds them first.”
Rafael nodded. “You will.”
After that tense meeting, Lili walked out of Rafael’s office, the weight of the conversation still tightening in her chest. In her room, she peeled off the remnants of combat and changed into simple clothes. Her stomach reminded her it still existed with a dull ache, so she made her way to the mess hall.
The space was buzzing with noise—cutlery clinking, boots dragging against the floor, voices blending into one senseless tide of sound. Dozens of soldiers and base workers filled the crowded area, some laughing, some arguing, some only eating in silence.
And then she saw Luke.
He was already standing between her and the nearest empty table, arms crossed over his chest, a crooked smile curling at the edges of his mouth. “Well, well,” he drawled loud enough for several nearby heads to turn. “If it isn’t the walking disaster herself.” His voice, wrapped in mockery. “Still glowing from that explosion, or are you just radioactive now?”
Lili didn’t respond, didn’t break her stride. But when she tried to pass, Luke moved sideways to block her. “Don’t tell me you actually think you belong here,” he continued, loud enough now to quiet the people nearby. “You don’t. We all know it. Some of us just have the spine to say it.”
Whispers flared like sparks behind her. She didn’t need to turn to feel the eyes, the judgment, the curiosity. “Move.” Her voice was calm, but laced with the warning.
He leaned slightly closer, his grin widening. “Or what? You’ll shadow me into dust?” His voice dipped lower, threatening, cruel. “We both know you’re a ticking time bomb.”
For a moment, Lili didn’t speak. Her expression didn’t shift. But her eyes darkened just a flicker. Shadows curled subtly along her spine, unseen by most, but heavy with restrained fury. “I won’t repeat myself,” she said slowly, voice barely above a whisper now. “Move. Or I’ll make you.”
That made the smirk falter. But he didn’t move yet.
The murmurs had died down. Lili stood unmoving, her gaze locked on Luke’s.
Luke leaned in. “You think you scare me?” he muttered, low now, for her ears alone. “You’re nothing but a pet project to them.”
“And you?” Lili murmured back. “You’re afraid of the cracks, so you pretend to be whole. But even your blood reeks of fear, Luke.”
The truth cut deeper than any insult and that’s when rage overtook him. With a sneer, Luke slammed his shoulder into hers. Her tray clattered to the floor.
Before the echo of it had faded, Lili’s hand moved. In one motion, she grabbed the front of his collar, yanking him close. Her eyes burned crimson. The smirk on his face returned, smug and satisfied.
Then—Lili saw the judgment, the waiting gazes, the silent accusation that if she struck, she would be the monster. Her breath caught. She could almost hear Cova’s voice in her head: “Don’t let them choose your mask for you.”
With one last breath of seething restraint, Lili released Luke’s collar. He stumbled back half a step, his smirk faltering, but not completely gone.
She didn’t look at him again. Without so much as a glance at the meal spilled at her feet, Lili turned and walked out.
She walked through the winding corridors with jaw clenched, fingers twitching, fury pulsing beneath her fake calm. She opened the door to the gym without any acknowledgement to the few soldiers inside whose eyes briefly flicked toward her before deciding, wisely, to look away.
She scanned the space until her gaze landed on a sandbag hanging slightly crooked near the corner wall.
Her legs carried her faster than thought, the muscles of her arms already tightening with anticipation. She landed a first strike without hesitation. Another punch followed, then a kick. The bag swung wildly, trembling from her fury. She poured everything into it—the humiliation, the hunger, the eyes that looked at her like a threat, like a joke, like something broken and expendable.
Shadows began to curl around her, but she ignored them.
“Ei!” Adam’s voice snapped.
Lili didn’t stop.
“Do you even see what’s happening!?” he demanded, stepping closer. “Or are you so far gone you don’t care who gets hurt?”
Her fist slammed into the sandbag one final time, leather groaning under the strike, but it was her breath that faltered, shallow and ragged.
“Leave me alone,” she growled.
Adam approached. “Look at yourself, you idiot!” he shouted, voice echoing off the high walls. “You think this makes you strong? You’re going to hurt someone. Or maybe that’s it—maybe you are the monster everyone thinks you are, and you just stopped pretending to care.”
The insult struck harder than she expected. Lili’s hands trembled. Her pulse roared in her ears. Then—her eyes dropped. And froze.
Shadows had crept across her, swirling and coiling up her arms, shivering along her spine. The sandbag wasn’t just swinging—it was scorched, black tendrils still receding from where her hands had struck it. Her breath hitched. Her eyes widened.
Lili’s gaze swept the gym—eyes darting over every startled face, every wary glance, every unspoken judgment hanging in the air. The shadows still pulsed faintly along her arms, reluctant to let go.
It wouldn’t be enough. The gym, the punching bag, Adam’s accusations—none of it would silence the storm rising in her chest, none of it would uncoil the dread tightening around her.
Without a word, without even casting a backward glance, Lili turned and bolted from the gym sprinting through the corridors, brushing past the curious, the cautious, and the clueless. She didn’t stop. Not until the door to her room loomed ahead.
She slammed it shut behind her. Only then did the shadows retreat. And only then did Lili collapse against the wall, her knees folding beneath her as though the weight of the world had finally caught up. Her hands dug into the fabric of her own clothes, clenching with invisible fury mixed with desperation. Her breath came in sharp, shuddering gasps—like each inhale was a fight and the surrender. And then… the tears. They fell quietly, one after another. And with them came the flood—memories of the explosion, the unbearable heat, the whispering voice in the darkness that promised she wouldn’t die. Also, the eerie calm after her body reformed from ash and shadow, the sting of the others’ stares, hostility in Luke’s voice, Adam’s accusation slicing deeper than it should’ve. She didn’t know why it hurt, why their judgment mattered, but it did…
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