She's waiting for me on the rooftop above Hollow Square, just like always—arms crossed, eyes sharper than any blade I've ever carried.
"Is it done?" she asks, without turning.
"No," I say.
A breath. Not surprise. Something closer to... stillness.
She turns.
"What do you mean 'no'?"
I meet her gaze. Hold it.
"He wasn't a traitor. Not like they said."
Her mouth tenses. "You think you know better than the Threadless?"
"No," I say. "I think you do."
---
Silence stretches between us. She looks away first.
The moonlight catches the edges of her jaw, and for the first time, I notice the tension there—*not* the kind born from anger.
The kind born from *cracks.*
"I've done what they told me for years," she mutters. "Climbed through the filth. Cut the throats they pointed at. Trusted that the bigger picture would matter more than the small pains."
Her voice trembles, just barely.
"But the picture keeps getting uglier."
---
I sit beside her on the ledge, high above the city that doesn't care if we breathe or bleed.
"The man told me you saved him once," I say. "That you stopped another Threadless from killing a kid."
Her shoulders flinch.
"I remember," she says softly. "I got punished for it. They said I was weak."
"You weren't," I say. "You were *right*."
She doesn't argue. That scares me more than if she did.
---
The ring pulses once.
Warm. Not a command. Not magic.
A shared breath.
I feel its truth again—*no one is beyond saving if they want to see the mirror clearly.*
---
"You're not their blade, Lira," I say. "You're more than what they turned you into."
She looks at me now.
Not the way a leader looks at a soldier.
The way a drowning person looks at someone who dove in after them.
"What do we do?" she asks.
I slip the mask off my belt and hold it between us.
"We change the Threadless."
Together.
---
She lets out a breath that sounds like surrender—but feels like hope.
"Then I guess I'm not done fighting."
"No," I say, and for the first time, my voice doesn't shake.
"You're just getting started."
---
That night, we sit on the rooftop as the city groans beneath us, two broken weapons trying to become something human.
And for the first time in my life—
I'm not alone.