The café was quiet—too quiet for the kind of power you carried now. You chose it deliberately. A reminder. A ruin. You sat alone at the corner table, black gloves folded neatly, coat untouched by dust, eyes scanning the curve of light across stained glass.
Then she walked in.
Elena Varis.
Former colleague. Former believer in everything you once stood for. The kind of person who wrote poems in policy margins and stood beside you when the world spat.
She hadn't changed.
Which made this worse.
She ordered coffee. Sat across from you. Her eyes didn't flinch at your new face, your altered voice, your unfamiliar name.
"I know who you are," she said.
You smiled. Slowly.
"No," you replied, voice like velvet just beginning to tear. "You remember who I used to be. That person died the night applause turned into knives."
She leaned forward, hands trembling. "You disappeared. And now you pull strings in quiet corridors. Laws shift where they shouldn't. Voices rise where they once trembled. You're rewriting the world."
You didn't answer.
She whispered, "Is it revenge?"
You looked at her then—really looked. At the fear, the grief, the flicker of hope. Your silence stretched like fate itself.
Then: "No."
You stood. Buttoned your coat. Turned toward the door.
"But when I burn it all," you said, "you'll know it wasn't vengeance."
You paused.
"It was justice. Purchased in full."
Outside, the city braced for heat it hadn't yet felt.
Inside, Elena remained at the table, staring at the coffee as if it could give her back a friend already turning myth.