(Marvel, DC, images, manhuas, and every anime that will be mentioned and used in this story are not mine. They all belong to their respective owners. The main character "Karito/Adriel Josue Valdez" and the story are mine)
Lillia woke to the sound of a heart trying to teach a machine a song.
Beep—pause—beep. The rhythm matched the small, scared drum in her chest. She blinked up at a ceiling that wasn't a forest canopy and wasn't a temple roof either—smooth plaster veined with glowing lines like shy constellations, vine-covered beams curling with runes that moved when you didn't look straight at them. A recovery ward, she guessed. Or a nursery for broken things.
She tried to sit up. The sheets slid like water. Something tugged at her wrist—thin tubing; a charm-clip blinking soft teal. She flinched, then breathed. Not chains. Not an IV she didn't understand. The charm hummed in time with her pulse, soothing, as if the room itself wanted her to stop bracing for impact.
Memory did what memories do when you ask them to be kind—they weren't. Sand and wind; trees ripping sideways. Two figures in the sky going at each other like storms with opinions. She remembered running with Shen and Karma, not like warriors—like villagers, like deer. Then the air buckled. A shock rolled the world. Darkness rushed in like a curtain pulled from both sides.
She looked down at herself and found hooves tangled in sheets.
Right. Hooves.
Her whole bottom half was still deer; her ears still flicked the way they always had when thunder thought about it. Habit took over. She let the Vastayan magic roll through her like a breath through leaves, and the form folded—limb, fur, tail—into the lighter line of her human shape. The patient robe made a small, gracious adjustment of its own, seams whispering, as if the cloth had waited for her to decide who she wanted to be this minute.
Two other beds. Shen on the left: mask off, the rest of him somehow still masked by the kind of quiet only discipline can build. Karma on the right: hands folded over bandages that glowed from underneath, the glow answering another inside her chest. Both breathing steady. Relief loosened something between Lillia's shoulder blades she hadn't noticed hardening.
The door sighed open.
The nurse who entered could have been from a Piltover clinic if Piltover had learned to smile with its eyes. Ixtali green stitched the collar of her modern scrubs, and charms braided into her hair clicked softly—vital signs, room wards, something jasmine-sweet for the nerves. Her hands were careful the way gardeners are careful: used to tending living things that don't always tell you where they hurt.
"Good afternoon," the nurse said, voice a low ripple. "I'm Yara. Can I check a few things?"
Lillia nodded before her voice remembered how to climb out. The cuff warmed around her finger; the charm on her wrist replied; the beeping learned a calmer verse. Yara listened, eyes flicking from readings to face, from face back to readings, like she was cross-stitching the two into a single picture. Satisfied, she softened into a chair beside the bed.
"You're safe," she said. "You're in Ixtal."
"Ixtal," Lillia echoed, and the word felt like a wrong puzzle piece that still wanted to fit. "How did we—? We were in Ionia and then—" She gestured vaguely, her hand drawing a shockwave, a horizon line, a fall.
"Lord Peter and Lord Ace brought you," Yara said. "After... everything." The nurse's mouth dipped at the edges in the way of someone who had seen too many kinds of "everything" this year. "You've been asleep two days. Your bodies needed the quiet."
Lillia's mind snagged on the titles first, then on the names. She'd heard "Peter" screamed with fear and "Ace" shouted with relief in the same hour. Hearing them here, spoken like weather patterns that had finally moved on, made her throat tight. Another word, though, wrapped around all the rest like ivy.
"Guardians?" she asked, testing it. "Like... Adriel?"
Yara's smile tilted. "Exactly like Adriel. He's our leader."
Leader. The word bloomed honey-warm and then stung. Lillia had held a year of empty spaces where his name should have been. A year of waiting for wind that never brought a message back through the trees. She had told herself he must have fallen. Everyone fell, eventually. The darks were too large; the sky too thin to hold them.
"He's alive," she said, and heard how small she sounded, as if she were asking permission.
"He is," Yara said simply. "He rebuilt Ixtal when it fell. He keeps us pointed toward morning. Queen Qiyana rules in the open; Adriel makes the impossible not feel like a miracle behind the scenes. It works." She glanced at Shen and Karma. "It's kept more of us alive than I can count."
Lillia's heart ran three fast steps and then remembered not to bolt. "I thought—there were no letters. No whispers in the dreamwood. We tried—" She stopped, because the thing her hands were doing with the sheet looked too much like wringing a small bird's neck.
Yara covered Lillia's hand with her own. "The dark made sure most roads didn't go both ways. But you're here now." She hesitated, as if weighing protocol against mercy. "If you wish, I can request an audience with our king."
"Your... king?" Lillia blinked. For one ridiculous heartbeat she pictured Adriel in a crown and nearly laughed. Then she remembered how people looked at him when he walked through a ruined square and thought, Maybe it's not a crown so much as gravity. "I mean—yes. Please. If he's not—if he's not in the middle of saving the world again."
"He is always in the middle," Yara said with a nurse's dry fondness. "But he makes time. Rest first. I'll send word."
When the nurse slipped out, the room remembered how to be quiet. Not empty—quiet. Magic and tech whispered to each other under the floor, exchanging notes. A wall pane slid from dim to peach, telling the body what time it was in a language older than clocks. Lillia leaned back and let her head find the exact soft of the pillow's middle.
Alive. He's alive.
The thought didn't arrive. It arrived, ran a circle, tripped on its own joy, and arrived again. She breathed and let it happen. The last time she had seen him, he had stopped a monster the size of a house with one hand—not punched it, not blasted it—stopped it, like catching a falling fruit before it hit a child. Then, with the other hand, he had unmade it in a way that didn't feel cruel. Just... finished. The forest had loved him for that. She had loved him for that, in the soft, leaf-bright way a heart can love a person it doesn't own.
Her eyes slid to Shen and Karma. She could almost hear Shen chide gently that attachment is a reed that bends, not a rope that binds. Karma would add that compassion is a practice, not an accident. Lillia smiled because being alive made it possible to disagree with them later.
The smile slipped. Ionia had been a map of losses for months. Names she'd known since she was a sapling had turned into offerings. Villages became lessons in how to leave. She'd learned more of fear's vocabulary than any botanist should: flight in the legs, ice in the fingers, the dry mouth that makes even your own name a hard word. And then two men had fought like gods where mortals had to harvest grain. She'd run as hard as any deer can run—and still the sky had found her with its fist.
Now here she was, in a room that didn't smell like smoke, in a bed that agreed to hold her weight without complaint, with a machine that kindly asked her heart how it was doing and then believed the answer.
She cried a little, privately, because relief takes up space it has to rent somehow.
When she had emptied enough to sit without sloshing, she swung her legs to the side and watched the window. The view wasn't jungle or city; it was both. Ixtal's terraces stepped down like theater seats toward a wide green. Between trees, she glimpsed glass towers braided with vines, footbridges that threw their own shade, market lanterns already practicing for evening. Children ran. Adults pretended not to run after them. Ordinary things. Sacred because they were ordinary.
A soft tap. Yara again, a small smile already loaded.
"He'll come," the nurse said, answering the question Lillia hadn't shaped yet. "Not tonight—he's with the Targon arrivals—but tomorrow, if you're up to it. And if you're steady, we can show you the gardens. They help."
"Gardens help," Lillia agreed, voice thick and honest. "Thank you."
Yara checked Shen, then Karma, adjusted a feed, murmured to a charm that answered with a chime, and paused at the door. "We have... better days here than we used to," she said, as if confessing a superstition. "You'll see."
When the door closed a second time, Lillia eased back and let herself notice the small things. The way the monitoring charm warmed where her skin was cold. The way the air tasted faintly of rain even though the pane said clear. The way Shen's breath and Karma's breath and hers braided into something you could tie a morning to.
She thought of the word Guardian. How big it looked from far away. How quiet it looked from here. A person who kept watch while others slept. A person who did the unglamorous things in between the miracles. A person who, when a frightened Vastaya asked if the world was ending, said, Not today.
The machine kept singing her heartbeat back to her. She learned the chorus. When sleep came, it wasn't the kind that drops like a trapdoor. It was a path through a garden at dusk, lanterns winking on as you passed, each light a reminder: alive, alive, alive.
In the morning, she decided, she would walk that garden with Yara. She would thank Peter and Ace with her best manners and a stubborn plate of sweets. She would bow to the queen and try not to stare at the king. She would tell Adriel what a wyvern looked like the moment before it decided to stop being a problem. She would say "thank you" once, and then say it again in a language the trees understood.
For now, she slept, and for once the dreamwood did not have to protect her. It only had to hold.
...
By the time the dinner plates were cleared and the first round of post-victory toasts had burned a pleasant path down a hundred throats, the palace had turned into a very civilized arcade.
Two islands formed around the tables Adriel had insisted Ixtal copy from another world. On one side: Monopoly, where empires rose and friendships died on the altar of orange properties. Darius negotiated like a warlord, LeBlanc "forgot" a mortgage twice, and Swain stared at Free Parking as if it owed him strategy. On the other: Uno, where Draw Fours multiplied like sins and Zoe laughed so hard she fell out of her chair when Taric tried to stack a Reverse on a Skip and got booed by three different nations at once.
Most of them were drunk—happy, loose, and loud in a way none of them had been for a year. A few held their ground against the bottles. Adriel didn't so much hold his ground as watch the alcohol dissolve on contact; one of his quiet, inconvenient perks treated anything toxic like a suggestion and escorted it out of his system before it could even send up a flare. Ace did not have that perk; he went absolutely feral on dessert flights and party games, high-fiving Peter every time a bad idea paid off. Saber matched them beat for beat until the gluttony caught up to her; she declared war on a final pastry and immediately lost to a stomachache, retreating with dignified fury.
Hours shed themselves. Four in the morning crept up like a cat—silent, inevitable. One by one, champions slipped away, escorted by yawns and arm-in-arm laughter. Staff ghosts (the good kind: butlers, maids, runners with brooms and blessing charms) drifted through to right chairs, gather cards, rescue toppled glasses. The palace learned how to be a home again as it cleaned.
When the last "one more round" finally lost its fight with gravity, only four remained in the hall: Adriel, Qiyana, Kindred—Lamb present, Wolf pacing her shadow—and Zoe, still awake out of sheer spite for bedtime.
They stepped out into the corridor to walk the buzz down. Lanterns along the walls carried soft bioluminescent coils that brightened as they approached and dimmed when they passed, making the corridor feel like it was breathing with them. Zoe talked because silence and Zoe had never signed a peace treaty.
"You know," she said, drifting backwards to face them, hair floating like it had its own opinions, "I've been so bored I started naming the cracks in the ceiling. Mangog ruins everything. Your entrance? Five stars. Your liberating-us-from-existential-doom vibes? Also five stars." She tipped an extravagant bow, then popped up grinning. "Thank you, Adriel. And Artoria. You came, you saw, you made the bad thing not be."
Qiyana smirked, taking the praise like it were meant for both of them—which, frankly, it was—but wearing it with the smug pride of someone who'd signed off on the budget and cut the ribbon at the opening. Adriel just shook his head with that half-tired, half-fond look he wore when gratitude tried to make him taller.
"It's the job," he said. "And I like this job better when people are laughing."
"Ugh, earnest," Zoe said happily. "Gross. Keep it." She paused at a door painted a cheerful galaxy. "This is me. If anyone needs me, I'll be horizontal and dreaming in color. Night, unofficial king. Night, actual queen. Night, death-but-make-it-poetry."
"Goodnight, small star," Lamb said, voice like a white string pulled gently.
Zoe blew them a kiss, slipped inside, and let the door sigh shut.
The palace gardens waited like a promise at the end of the next hallway. They stepped out into air washed clean by the late hour. Moonlight clung to leaves; irrigation charms murmured under the beds; somewhere, a night bird tried on three songs and kept two. At the center, a fountain lifted sheets of water that fell in patient curtains. Adriel sat on its edge and let the stone take his weight.
Qiyana stayed close—close enough to be counted, close enough to be read as guard and confidante in the same breath. She'd discarded the last sharp edges of her queen-in-public posture back in the hall; out here, in the cool, she read as a woman who knew what she wanted and didn't plan to apologize for it.
Lamb stood a few steps away, hands folded, gaze up. Wolf hovered farther out, circling the statue bases, sniffing the night, throwing Adriel a side-eye that said he didn't like any plan that didn't include teeth. He didn't like Lamb near Adriel, either—not fear; bristled embarrassment, as if something about proximity made him aware of being seen.
They tried small talk for a minute because that's what people do when something larger is pacing under the table. Qiyana teased Wolf about skulking; Wolf informed her that skulking was a sacred art. Adriel mentioned the cloud line over the eastern ridge and how it meant rain by midday. Lamb said nothing, and in saying nothing said everything: shoulders set, weight not quite settled, breath measured like she was on a threshold and the house beyond it hadn't decided if it would open.
Adriel watched the water fall. He felt the shape of the moment settling—how it asked for quiet, how it asked for an answer. He pinched the bridge of his nose; fatigue left a faint chalk line there no healing factor bothered to erase.
He looked up at Lamb. "Alright," he said, gentle and direct. "Say it."
Lam went still when he called it. Of course he saw it—he always did when he bothered to look.
"I remember what you said," she started, soft as snowfall. "Before Mangog. You told me there would be ways for us to help. You said—if not in the fight, then near it. I waited. You left while everyone slept." Her fingers worried the edge of her sash. "I am tired of waiting. I am tired of being nothing."
Wolf paced a tight oval behind her, tail a metronome. He didn't add a joke. That alone said plenty.
Adriel sat forward on the fountain lip, elbows on his knees. "I didn't 'leave you behind' to be cruel, Lam. I did it because you can't help in those fights." He lifted a hand before she could cut in. "Not because you're weak. Because pure Darks are a different class of problem. They don't live on the board you live on."
"I lived on that board once," she said. "Balance between breath and stillness. I found you when you slipped its seam and hauled you back. Was that nothing?"
"That was everything," he said, a flash of warmth cracking through. "You saved my ass, and probably this whole timeline. It was also the edge of your mandate, and you touched it because you're extraordinary. But going toe-to-toe with a concept built to unmake stories? That's not a duty call. That's a suicide note."
Her jaw set. "Then let me stand close. Let me carry water. Let me do anything besides sit in gilded safety while you bleed."
"You want the honest version?" His tone flattened. "I promised you 'something' because you were spiraling and I needed you calm before Targon. I shouldn't have done that; I don't like lying to my friends. But I'm not bringing any champion into a pure Dark fight. Not as sword, not as banner, not as moral support." He tapped his temple. "I've done this dance too many times. The pattern ends with me dragging bodies out of a ruin and pretending it was worth it. I'm not rerunning that tape."
Wolf stopped pacing. "Wrong hunt," he said, almost sheepish. "Bad woods. Prey that isn't prey."
Lamb flinched like he'd touched a bruise. "So I sit. Again."
Qiyana stepped in then—right shoulder just kissing Adriel's, as much claim as comfort. "You sit," she said, iron braided into the silk. "Because I know what it looks like when we don't. When a Dark runs a country and your best warriors can't do anything except die brave and change nothing." Her eyes stayed on Lamb, steady. "I wore chains in my own streets. My people tried a 'resistance' that was just nicer running. We were lucky Adriel came when he did. Lucky Artoria crawled out of her own hell and chose us." A breath; not a tremble, exactly—more a controlled memory. "This is not about pride. It's about math. You don't have the numbers to touch what's outside the page. They do."
Lamb's voice thinned. "You speak of numbers. I speak of worth."
"And I'm speaking of staying alive," Adriel said. "I know you feel useless when you're not in the splash art. You're not. Keeping people steady here matters. Walking the boundary of life and death for the ones we bring back matters. But I won't—" he shook his head, a small, final motion "—I won't weaponize you to make you feel better. Champions don't leave Ixtal until this is over. That's the line."
Silence stretched. Water kept falling.
Lamb looked to Wolf with a plea she didn't voice. Wolf looked away. "We already argued it," he muttered. "I like chasing. I don't like chasing storms."
Her shoulders rounded, then squared again. "You call yourself king," she said, a crack in the calm, "and I see god. Let me kneel near the altar at least."
"Don't." It came out sharper than he intended. He exhaled, made himself soften the edges. "Don't do the god thing. I barely tolerate the king thing. I'm a janitor with admin permissions trying to stop a malware outbreak. That's it. Save the worship for... no one, actually. I don't want it."
The night put a cool coin on his forehead. Headache trying to bloom. He rubbed at it with two fingers. "I'm done arguing. The answer is no. It stays no. I don't want to hear this again."
He stood. Qiyana matched his rise, eyes never leaving Lamb's.
"You want purpose?" Qiyana said, gentler now but not soft. "Take care of the ones who stagger back through our doors. Teach them how to sleep again without counting ghosts. Make this place heavier with joy than with fear. That is work only you can do. And it keeps them breathing long enough for him to finish the war."
Lamb's gaze flicked between them. Hurt, pride, something older. She nodded once, not agreement so much as acknowledgment that the wall would not move tonight.
Adriel touched Qiyana's hand—thanks, anchor, both—and turned for the colonnade. "I'll be in the war room at noon," he said over his shoulder. "If you need me before then, don't."
Qiyana lingered just long enough to leave one more stitch. "Stop chasing the shape of debt," she told Lamb. "You don't owe him a death to balance what you did. He doesn't want it." Then she followed Adriel into the dark-silver hall.
The garden learned a new quiet.
Wolf let out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh. "He's right," he offered, trying for consolation and landing on blunt. "You can't help."
Lamb's head turned slowly. The look could have felled a stag. Wolf winced. "Wrong words."
She stepped back from the fountain, the night making a pale ghost of her hair. "I will do the work I can," she said, to the water more than to him. "And I will bury the urge to follow until it stops scratching."
Wolf padded sideways, contrite, tail low. "I said it badly," he muttered. "I meant—we make sure there's something to come back to. That's our hunt."
No answer. Lamb was already walking, quiet feet on the mosaic path, vanishing into the hedged shadow the way ending and mercy do when the living stop looking right at them.
Wolf stared after her, huffed at himself, then loped off to find a different angle back to her side and an apology that didn't taste like salt.
The halls were quiet enough to hear the castle breathe. Moonlight pooled on polished stone; the gardens outside hummed with the low-night chorus. Adriel walked it off—jaw tight, shoulders set—Qiyana pacing beside him in an easy glide that said she could match his stride or break it whenever she felt like it.
"She got under your skin," she said, not a question.
"Pretty obvious," he muttered. "I've had that talk with Lamb a dozen times. Ixtal already does the worship thing; I don't need it from friends."
Qiyana's mouth quirked. "I know. That's why I only worship you in private. Publicly, I simply rule next to you."
He snorted despite himself. "You really don't get tired of the 'king' bit, huh?"
"Not when the crown fits," she shot back, then softened. "I asked because it still matters to ask. Are you alright?"
He glanced over. "You being glued to my side all night kind of answered that for me. Thanks for the assist back there—and for running interference with the Targon welcome wagon."
"Mmm. Interference, yes," she said, lashes low. "Also, territorial display. Eye candy is community property until someone calls dibs, and I called dibs first."
"Bold claim," he said, deadpan. "Tragic that I'm deaf to claims."
"Tragic that I'm fluent in persistence."
They traded that smile—the one that said neither of them was backing up—and kept walking. After a beat, he tilted his head. "Speaking of persistence... thought I heard a nurse say one of the Ionians is awake."
Qiyana perked, then nodded. "I slipped out during Uno-gate and found her waiting. She said one of the three wanted an audience with you. I told her tomorrow afternoon would work and that I'd fetch my king." She rolled her eyes at herself. "She giggled. I told her I'm manifesting it."
Adriel barked a laugh. "You're really trying to lore-patch that rumor into canon."
"Someone has to," she said, smug. "Anyway—war room at noon, Ionia at four. I forgot to tell you, but you can't fire me; I don't work for you."
"Noted." He exhaled through his nose, the humor thinning. "Last mission always finds a new way to be a pain in the ass."
"You'll cut it clean," she said, zero doubt. "And when the cutting's done, we rebuild. Again."
They turned down the royal corridor. The sconces here were softer; the air smelled faintly of citrus and rain—Adriel's little upgrades to make a fortress feel like a home. Qiyana stopped at her door and pivoted to face him, chin tilted up, eyes searching his.
"This is my stop." A beat. "And—thank you. For all of it. For us."
He started to wave it off. "Don't act like saving you wasn't worth it—"
She opened her mouth; he reached without thinking and laid two fingers gently across her lips. "Every story here is worth it," he said, quiet and fierce. "You have no idea how much."
Her lips were warm against his fingertips, softer than he expected. It short-circuited him for half a second—just long enough for a flush to threaten before he caged it behind a steady look.
He withdrew, turning to go. "Get some sleep, reina. Big day tomorrow—"
"I haven't thanked you properly," she said.
"For what—?"
She moved. One smooth step, a catch at his waist, arms sliding up around his neck, and then her mouth was on his—sure, hungry, tasting faintly of stolen fruit punch and something bright. He rocked back a fraction, boots whispering on stone, then found his balance and her. He kissed her back without thinking, one hand braced at the small of her back, the other hovering like he couldn't decide if this was a bad idea or the only one.
Time stretched—the kind that wasn't measured by clocks so much as by breath and the way a heartbeat syncs to someone else's. When she finally eased away, her smile was all victorious softness.
"I'm saving that," Qiyana murmured. "And I meant what I said. Good night, my—Adriel."
She slipped through her door with a little extra sway that she did not need and absolutely deployed anyway.
Adriel stood there a few beats, blinking at the wood like it had just rewritten a law of physics. Then he dragged a hand down his face and exhaled a laugh he couldn't quite smother.
"What the hell is my life," he said under his breath. He started toward his own room, rubbing the back of his neck. "And... damn. Girl's a good kisser."
A stray thought blinked neon in his head and he grimaced, amused at himself. "Thanks, Night City. Real helpful upgrade."
He keyed into his chambers, the door murmuring shut behind him, and let the quiet take him the rest of the way to bed. Tomorrow could bring the war back. Tonight got to keep the win.
...
Peter dreamed in clean edges and white light—the way the Nexus of Knowledge & Imagination liked to render itself when you were too tired to choose a texture. A horizon of suspended panes drifted around him, each a living page: an anime mid-battle freeze-frame, a sitcom kiss, a splash panel of some cape's last stand. He scrolled with a flick of his wrist, not really seeing any of it, just letting the motion distract the part of his brain that still woke up to the sound of a universe ending.
Soft footsteps. A familiar micro-warp ripple in the room's geometry. Chrona appeared behind him like a hush—library-silent, starlight at the hem of her coat. She set down a little plate beside his elbow: golden wheat cakes, Aunt May perfect, steam curling like a memory you could eat if you were brave.
"How are you holding up?" She didn't ask it for data. She asked it like a hand extended.
He kept scrolling a second too long, then stopped. "Still... trying to hold on to the little hope I've got left."
Her arms slid around his shoulders. "Don't forget: I love you. And Adriel cares for you, even when you two make the Nexus crash from arguing."
His mouth tugged. The fight. The awful, unfair things he'd said while hurt was making the choices. The apology after, clumsy and raw.
"I don't know what to feel," he admitted. "I'm pretty sure it's gonna be weird with him for a while."
"Adriel was mad because you were unfair," she said, blunt in the way only someone safe could be. "But you apologized. I don't want the two people who saved me from an empty eternity to break each other. I'll help both of you. You're all I have left, too."
He turned, met her eyes, felt the ache flicker and flare. "I can't think straight with this much... everything. You're my only beacon right now."
"Then lean on me. A hundred times, a thousand." Her forehead touched his. "You don't hurt people on purpose. If something breaks around you, it's this job, not your heart. I'm your librarian. Your handler. Your home. None of that changes."
He swallowed, the words landing in the place that still believed in them. "I love you."
A tiny smile. "I know."
The Nexus light folded like a page turning—and he woke.
Morning sun sliced through the enchanted lattice of his Ixtal windows, dust motes drifting like lazy comets. The room was a mashup of rainforest chic and twenty-first-century convenience: woven wood and obsidian, discreet power ports, a holoshelf with exactly three mugs and a mess of tools he swore he'd put away later. His chest hurt in a clean way. Not the bad kind. The kind after a deep breath.
Ping.
The Gamer HUD blinked into the corner of his vision, Adriel's shared system throwing a text banner across his morning:
Ace: Heading to the new mall w/ Artoria. Plaza Las Américas (yeah, that one). u in?
Peter smiled despite himself. Of course Adriel would manifest a Puerto Rican mall out of nostalgia and stubborn affection. Of course Ace would beeline to it. He thumbed a reply while he brushed his teeth.
Peter: Gimme 3 min. Finishing the glamorous life.
Ace: I'll time you. any longer than 5 and I'm telling Artoria you flossed the nanomachines again.
He snorted, closed the HUD, threw on casuals: soft tee, dark jeans, lightweight jacket. He paused, eyes snagging on the sealed case in the corner—Iron Spider disassembled to glittering dust, Speed Force core tucked safely away. Not today. Today: friends, air, something normal stretched over the weird.
The castle corridors were quiet, staff ghosts at this hour, the night's party washed away by maids with miraculous brooms. He stepped out into the main entrance and found them at the steps—Ace in a relaxed sprawl that still managed to look like he could suplex a mountain, Artoria straight-backed and composed, hands lightly folded, eyes bright in a way that said she'd slept and definitely eaten.
"Took you long enough," Ace called. "You brushing each tooth individually?"
"The molars unionized," Peter said. "We had to negotiate."
Artoria sighed, the British kind. "If you two are done auditioning for court jester, we do have a destination."
"Plaza Las Américas," Peter echoed, falling in between them. "Adriel told me about it—biggest mall back home."
"Back his home," Ace said, nudging. "We're just tourists."
Peter let the banter run while they crossed the forecourt into a city that still surprised him. Ixtal had grown into itself overnight—vines and glass, magic lines and traffic lights, food stalls steaming beside rune-chiseled kiosks. The portal tram hummed them outward; towers slid by like trees; sky unrolled, clean and blue.
For a slice of morning, the war felt far away. The guilt quieted. The memory of Chrona's "I know" sat warm behind his ribs.
He hooked his thumbs in his pockets and glanced at his friends. "Alright," he said, half to them, half to himself. "Let's go see if this place has a decent pretzel. Or, you know, pastelillos if Adriel did it right."
Ace grinned. Artoria pretended not to. And the three of them let the day take them, ordinary on purpose.
...
The throne room wasn't supposed to exist. At least, not Adriel's section.
Adriel had said that—out loud, in writing, in twelve separate "absolutely not"s. And yet here it was anyway: a long nave of jungle stone and living ivy braided through discreet chrome ribs, daylight pouring down a skylight split like a leaf vein. Flags of Ixtal hung from high beams, their glyphs re-stitched in brighter thread since the rebuilding. Two chairs—don't call them thrones, don't—sat on a raised dais. Qiyana's was a clean curve of jade and gold, ceremonial as a blade on a mantel. The other was simpler, darker—obsidian inlays, armrests worn already by a man who didn't want them.
He took in the room with that flat, tolerant stare he used whenever the universe insisted on crowning him. Humble or not, the job kept pinning medals to his shirt.
Qiyana was already there, posture perfect, eyes wicked. "Morning, mi rey," she sang, and the title landed like a fingertip to his ribs.
Adriel regreted ever teaching her Spanish, now she teases him with his home language as much as she can. Who would've thought that a woman so entranced by someone would learn a whole new language in just a week?
"Morning," he said, because pretending it wasn't a game only invited her to play harder.
She rose and met him halfway down the steps, a cat who had found the warm spot on the sofa and intended to keep it. The look she gave him was half victory, half dare—the look of someone replaying last night's kiss in slow motion.
"So," she said, light as air, "sleep well? Or were you... distracted?"
He gave her a cool, unimpressed blink. "From what?"
Her mouth curved. "From me."
"Can't imagine why." He stepped past her and dropped into the not-throne like a man choosing to lose an argument with a chair. The cushion took his weight; the room's quiet took the rest. He could feel her smile without seeing it.
Qiyana drifted to her seat—no, to his side—ignoring hers entirely. She set herself on the edge of his armrest and laid a hand over his, knuckles to knuckles, nails a glossy, lethal neutral. Heat. Contact. A claim, wrapped up to look like calm.
He did not look at their hands. He very deliberately studied the far end of the hall. She's really trying to get in my pants, flashed across his mind, crisp and unhelpful. Holy shit.
"So," he said, ejecting the thought by force, "it's Lillia, right? Shen and Karma are still out."
Qiyana hummed, pleased to let him change lanes—for now. "Mhm. Nurse Yara says Lillia woke a few hours after the festivities died down. The other two are still sleeping. A healer's sleep. They need it."
He sighed through his nose. "Right. Good." A beat; then, softer, almost to himself, "Let's hope she doesn't... y'know. Spiral. Or get heated that I 'disappeared.' We met one day and she tried to walk into my dreams; I set a boundary and somehow still ended up apologizing." He rubbed a thumb across the seam of the armrest. "I get that this timeline tweaks people, but..."
Qiyana angled toward him, predatory curious. "But what, Adriel?" She'd heard the tone more than the words. She lived for the end of other people's sentences.
"Nothing," he said.
"Liar."
He cut her a sideways look. "You planning to keep interrogating me, Su Majestad?"
"I'm planning to keep you honest," she said, wicked and warm. "And to keep you." The last word came velveted, casual as a promise.
He huffed, the closest he'd give her to a laugh right now. The hall breathed around them: faint fountain noise from the garden courts; the distant, efficient rhythm of palace staff resetting the day. He could do this—sit, listen, welcome, move the story forward without turning it into a briefing.
Qiyana's thumb traced a thoughtless pattern over his knuckles. "You leaned," she said suddenly, sing-song, like a child tattling to the sky. "Last night."
"I was surprised," he said, deadpan.
"You were hungry."
"For food," he said. "Which I was late to because someone decided to surprised the shit out of me."
"Oh?" She tilted her head, delighted. "So it worked."
He stared ahead, stone-faced. "I'm surrounded."
"By people who adore you," she said, not even pretending to be shy about it. "Don't glower; it only makes you prettier."
He swallowed a smile. "You need to stop calling me king in public."
"Then stop being one," she breathed, and there was the knife, invisible and honest. She tapped his hand. "Anyway. Lillia."
He let his eyes unfocus for a second, letting memory play in the periphery: a forest, a panicked blur of hooves, a shadow falling across the canopy, his hand closing around a wyvern's throat like a clamp on a bad idea. Lillia's wide, wet eyes after, the way gratitude had flowed into attachment with no space between. The gentle, invasive brush of her magic trying to check on him while he slept. His temper, quick and clean. The apology afterward, not because he'd been wrong, but because alienating a keystone in the world's weave made the weave harder to repair.
"I'll hear her out," he said, more to the room than to Qiyana. "I owe her that much. She probably thought I died when I went off-grid."
"You did," Qiyana said, and softened it with a shrug. "In a way that counts. Then you did it again and again for... too long." She squeezed his fingers once. "You're here now."
He nodded once. He was. For as long as here existed, he intended to be inside it, fixing what could be fixed.
"So," Qiyana said brightly, shifting gears with the lethal ease of a driver in a city she owned, "what exactly were you mumbling?"
"Boundary-setting," he said.
"Mmm. With me too?"
"Don't start."
"I already did."
He looked at her then, head tipped, an exasperated, fond, por favor threaded through the glance. It didn't slow her at all; it never did. He liked that about her—when it wasn't driving him up a wall.
A soft knock echoed from the great doors before either of them could turn the moment into something else. The bronze leaves parted just enough for a slim figure in green-and-white to slip through, moving with the quiet authority of someone who kept other people alive for a living.
Yara bowed—first to Qiyana out of protocol, then to Adriel out of stubborn gratitude the palace hadn't been able to iron out of its staff. "Your Majesties," she said—ignoring the micro-flinch Adriel couldn't quite hide—"I have brought Lillia, as requested."
She stepped aside. In the doorway's shadow stood Lillia, small and tentative in her human shape, hospital tunic re-wrapped by her own magic into something that looked less like recovery and more like dignity. Her eyes were the same: forest-deep, skittish-brave, holding too many losses for someone who looked that young.
Adriel exhaled, stood, and let the king-thing happen only in his posture—not in the word.
"Bring her in," he said, voice even. "Let's talk."
Lillia POV
I hear the voice before I see him.
"Bring her in. Let's talk."
It hits some old bell in my head—familiar, but muffled by a year of noise. I step through the doors with Nurse Yara at my side and the throne room yawns open like a forest path after rain—green and stone and metal braided together. Two figures wait at the far end. Qiyana is impossible to miss: queen-sure spine, smile sharp as a crescent blade. To her right—
Adriel.
I stop like my hooves hit ice, except I'm in my human shape and barefoot inside the patient slippers they gave me. A year falls away and overlays everything: the night he pulled a roaring sky-lizard out of the air like it was a bad idea he could undo with one hand; the way his eyes then looked old and smoked-out, like someone who kept walking long after the road ended.
He doesn't look like that now.
He still carries weight—responsibility sits on his shoulders like a cloak—but there's...light. Not a lot. Enough. His face isn't a locked door anymore. It's a door someone oil-hinged and propped open with a chair because people keep needing to come in and out.
"Lillia," he says, like we've always used first names. "Been a while."
Qiyana inhales to say something court-shaped; he flicks her a look that says please don't, and she rolls her eyes like a cat and lets it go. The weirdest part isn't that he ignores the protocol—it's that he does it gently. Like the point is making me comfortable, not proving anything.
"Good morning, your—" I catch myself, cheeks heating. "Adriel."
"Morning," he says. His mouth tilts. "Welcome back to the world."
Yara squeezes my elbow and bows herself out. "I'll be just outside," she says, and melts away with that nurse magic of being everywhere and nowhere.
Adriel leans back—definitely-not-a-throne pretending very hard it isn't—and glances up at Qiyana. "You should go check the new mall. Make sure they didn't mess up the layout in my—" His eyes flick to me, then back to her, teasing. "—secret room plans."
Qiyana's grin goes volcanic. "You're insufferable."
"And you built a whole Plaza Las Américas because I got homesick and wouldn't shut up about mall pretzels," he shoots back, deadpan. Then softer, truer: "Thank you. It...helps."
She freezes just a fraction—caught by the sincerity—then preens like a cat given sun. "It's the least I can do for my people's hero." She lifts a brow at me, conspiratorial. "And for mine."
I pretend not to hear that last part because my heart is already doing enough.
"Anytime," he says, and it lands like he means it. Qiyana squeezes the top of his hand once—claim, comfort, both—stands, and slinks for the doors with a sway that whispers I'm winning. Over her shoulder: "You know where to find me, mi rey. Try not to hide in this cave too long."
"Go supervise the pretzels," he says, and she laughs herself out of the hall.
Silence takes a breath. Then Adriel pushes up from the not-throne and closes the distance at an easy pace, hands open, palms empty. He stops far enough that I don't feel cornered, close enough that I feel seen.
"Walk?" he offers. "The gardens got an upgrade while you were out. Figured you'd like them more than...this." He gestures at the room-that-isn't-a-throne-room. His gaze dips to my clinic tunic and the ridiculous slippers. "Also, we're absolutely getting you into something that isn't a glorified bedsheet."
A laugh jumps out of me. It sounds silly and young and very alive. "I mean, I can glamor this into a ball gown," I say, and flutter my fingers. The fabric obliges, shifting at the edges, then fizzles back when I lose the thread. I've been asleep too long.
He chuckles—an honest, low thing that feels like it belongs to a friend and not a walled-off war machine. "Save the couture for the pretzel grand opening," he says. "C'mon. We'll raid the wardrobe."
He turns to the door and pauses just long enough to nod at Yara—who has somehow reappeared like a benevolent ghost. "Take five, Nurse. Actually, take fifty. You've been on ionian watch for... how many hours?"
"Enough," she says, smiling like she's trying not to. "And nowhere near what I owe you for the life I'm living." She bows. "Thank you, sir."
He winces at the title, waves it away as if shooing a fly that insists on calling him sir. "Get some tea."
Yara glides off. Adriel tips his head toward the hall. "Well? You coming, or are you going to keep staring like I'm going to vanish if you blink?"
"I—sorry." I scurry to catch up, then force myself to slow into something dignified. "It's just... you feel... different."
"Working on it," he says, not looking at me, which somehow makes it easier to say what I mean.
"You wouldn't let anyone close," I admit, words small and honest. "Before. You were... tired in your bones. Like a door with three locks. Now you're... not unlocked, but... you answer when someone knocks."
He breathes out through his nose, half laugh, half ache. "Takes practice," he says. "And decent people. And someone yelling at me when I'm being an ass." A beat. "I'm sorry about last time, by the way. The dream thing. Boundary was fair; tone wasn't."
I blink. "I was the one who pushed. I wanted to help and forgot that help without permission is just... another kind of taking." I look down at my hands. "Thank you for letting me try again."
He bumps my shoulder with the back of his knuckles—light, permission built into the touch. "We try again," he corrects. "Plural."
We turn out of the great hall and into a corridor that lives—vines braided up light fixtures, glass set like water, floor tile that holds warmth like sun-baked stone. Somewhere ahead, I hear actual birds—no glamour, no spell, just living throats. Hope hums in my sternum like a hive.
"First stop," he says, guiding me toward a side door, "wardrobe. You pick what's comfortable. Then garden tour. Then, if you're up for it, maybe I introduce you to the world's most contentious Uno table."
I grin before I can stop it. "Do I get to reverse four?"
"Only if you're ready to be hunted," he says solemnly. "A buddy of mine tends to hold a grudge." He quickly thinks of Ace falling for Peter's taunts in Uno.
We pass a mirror and I catch us side by side: me in borrowed cloth and hospital wrists; him in simple clothes that refuse to make him less than what he is. A year ago, I would've seen a wall and bounced off. Now I see a man who decided to be a bridge.
He reaches the wardrobe room and holds the door. "Go change, Lillia. I'll be right here."
I nod, throat tight and light all at once. "Okay."
Inside, an attendant helps me find something soft and green that moves like leaves and doesn't fight my magic if I need to shift. I touch the fabric, breathe in the clean starch-and-forest smell, and let myself feel the smallest, most dangerous thing: safe.
When I step back out, Adriel is exactly where he said he'd be, arms folded, eyes patient.
"Ready to see what's new?" he asks.
"I am," I say. And—for the first time in too long—I mean it.
They stepped out into the castle gardens and the air changed—cooler, sweet, alive. Vines latticed along glass and stone; beds overflowed with greens Lillia knew...and many she didn't. Her eyes went round.
"What are those?" she breathed, pointing at a drooping cluster of jade-green marbles.
Adriel smiled. "Those? Quenepas. Little sour-sweet grenades. You pop 'em, and suddenly the bag's empty and your jaw's tired from fighting the seed."
"And that... big spiky one?" She hovered her fingers over a glossy, armored fruit resting in a cradle of leaves.
"Guanábana—soursop. Looks like it wants to stab you; tastes like someone froze a cloud and turned it into ice cream."
She laughed, light and surprised. "You brought these from...?"
"My homeland," he said, simple. "Puerto Rico. Figured Ixtal could adopt some cousins."
They walked beneath a trellis where fragrant vines clung and pulsed with bees.
"These passion flowers are so intricate," Lillia murmured.
"Parcha," he said. "Juice that'll make you believe in second chances."
They passed a waist-high shrub studded with red, marble-shiny berries. "Acerola," he added. "Vitamin C on beast mode. Tastes like summer and bad decisions."
"Bad decisions?"
"You'll see how many you eat," he grinned.
They turned beside a squat tree with smooth, russet fruit. He thumped one gently. "Mamey. Slice it and it looks like sunset."
A familiar perfume tugged at Lillia's memory. "Guava?"
"Guayaba," he confirmed. "Good for jam. Better for stealing before breakfast."
Her gaze jumped to a patch of knee-high bushes with narrow, starry leaves. He bent, tore a single blade, and bruised it between fingers. "Smell."
She did. Her eyes widened. "Sharp—bright—like the forest after rain."
"Recao—culantro," he said. "Cilantro's tougher, louder cousin. Goes in everything. Especially—"
"Rice?" she guessed.
"Gandules," he said, nudging a row of soft, silver-green plants pebbled with pods. "Pigeon peas. Rice and gandules is... holiday DNA."
A burst of color made her stop. Huge hibiscus-like petals, a deep rose with a golden throat, swayed over heart-shaped leaves.
"That one's special," Adriel said, softer. "Flor de maga. We used to call it Puerto Rico's flower. Seeing it here feels... right."
Lillia turned slowly, taking it all in—the new woven through the old, nothing forced, everything talking. "You stitched your home into ours."
"Trying to," he said. "New roots help tired soil remember how to breathe."
They circled to the fountain at the garden's heart. Water rose like glass and fell like silk; sun flashed off tiny tiles that made constellations under the surface. Lillia sat first, fingertips trailing the rim.
"It's so clean," she whispered. "For months I heard nothing but... cracks. Roots choking. Streams going quiet. Every time I reached for the wilds, I felt them pulling away." She swallowed. "Here it hums again."
Adriel eased down beside her. "How are you—really?"
"I don't know how to say it without breaking," she said, and then said it anyway. "I keep counting who isn't here. I keep hearing footsteps that stop. And then I look up, and it's quiet, and there's water, and I'm still... allowed to be happy?" She blinked fast, smiling and crying at once. "It feels wrong. And it feels like breathing."
He didn't cut in. He let the fountain talk and the leaves agree.
"Thank you," she added. "For... showing me new things to learn. It gives my hands somewhere gentler to go."
They sat for a time. When he spoke again, his voice had shifted; it came from farther away and much closer.
"Today's New Year's Eve where I'm from," he said. "December thirty-one." He rolled the date like a stone he'd warmed in his pocket. "Back home, by now my mom's fighting my aunts in the kitchen about salt, my dad's pretending he doesn't like salsa and dancing anyway, my sister's 'borrowing' my speakers. Somebody's making pernil that fell in love with the oven. Somebody set off fireworks two hours early. It's loud and messy and... it's ours."
Lillia turned. His eyes were on the water; the water was on his face.
"The doctors told my parents I wouldn't keep up," he said quietly. "That I'd need help forever—meds, tutors, patience most people don't have. My mom... gave all of it. My dad too. My sister... she dragged me up hills I didn't want to climb and told me jokes at the top." He huffed a breath that wasn't a laugh. "And then one stupid wish—just 'I want adventure'—and I got a contract with everything, written in invisible ink."
"You had a childish dream," Lillia said.
"I did," he said. "And the ink still doesn't care." His jaw tightened. "I miss them. Every good thing I do feels like paying a tab I ran up with interest. Peter lost everyone. That's on my board too, even if it's not fair, even if people tell me it isn't. I can't stop doing the math."
Lillia's hand found his forearm and stayed.
"I wanted this job to be fun," he went on, words loosening now that they hurt. "Quests, power-ups, saving the day and then going home to tell the story. It wasn't. I learned mean. Efficient. I told myself it was necessary. I told Vi... awful things. I told a lot of people awful things. My mom didn't raise me to make efficiency my excuse." He swallowed. "Nine hundred quintillion years later, I finally remembered."
He went quiet. The fountain kept counting seconds.
Lillia exhaled, steady. "You're remembering again right now."
"Yeah." He scrubbed his face, then stood. "Come with me. I have an idea."
He walked to the lawn's center and opened his hand. Light—clean, programmable—flowered from his palm. A dozen drone-bright cylinders unfolded in air and snapped into a neat circle. He flicked his fingers; settings rippled like notes on a staff.
"Daytime fireworks?" Lillia guessed, a smile tugging. "Is that a thing?"
"It is if you cheat," he said. "High-saturation pigments, no smoke, shapes the wind can't bully. And a label." He glanced up toward the castle roofs. "So nobody thinks we're under attack."
He pointed. A glowing banner arced overhead:
OPENING DAY – PLAZA LAS AMÉRICAS — FELIZ AÑO NUEVO
"Two birds," he said. "One bonkers light show."
Lillia's grin trembled. "I've only ever seen fireworks in dreams."
"Then let's make a real one," he said, and tapped the air.
Color bloomed against blue sky—huge, bright, impossible. Petals of parcha purple unfurled and turned into a spinning quenepa branch before dissolving into tiny maga blossoms that drifted like snow. A guayaba split to reveal a heart that burst into a ring of dancing figures holding hands. A river of gold beads—gandules—poured up instead of down, curving into a crescent that winked into a laughing moon. Every flare stayed soft at the edges, every boom replaced by a warm chime; this was spectacle built to soothe.
Across Ixtal, heads tilted. In the city, tools paused mid-air. On balconies, children pointed and forgot to argue. In the infirmary, Karma sat forward, light gathering in her eyes; Shen pushed aside a curtain and let the sky write across his face. In the palace, Neeko whooped; Lux squeezed Kayle's hand without realizing it; Sarah Fortune's smile cracked something old and hard inside her chest. Noxian shoulders—Darius, Swain, Katarina—unclenched by inches, unwilling, grateful. Qiyana stood in the plaza, chin raised, and let a reflection of the banner brighten her crown.
By the fountain, Lillia watched all of it... and then wasn't watching the sky anymore. She was watching Adriel's mouth try not to shake.
"Hey," she said, rising. "You don't have to be the strongest person in the garden right now."
He didn't answer with words. He looked at her hand, then at her, and took it. She stepped in, and they stood like that—two people holding in a living place while the air painted shapes for everyone who'd survived.
He breathed once, twice, ragged the third time. "I—"
"It's okay," she said.
His head bowed. The chimes of his fireworks fixed the silence like stitches.
"I miss my family... so much," he said, and the truth of it unfastened the rest. He shook, not like a building, like a person; Lillia held on. For a long minute there was nothing to save, only something to share.
When he steadied, he scrubbed at his face with the heel of his hand and managed a crooked apology-smile that wasn't for anything except habit.
"Thank you for the flowers," Lillia said softly, as if they were the reason she was there. "And the fireworks. And... for letting me be here for this part too."
He squeezed her fingers once. Above them, a final blossom opened—flor de maga, huge and gentle—and poured down a quiet red dawn that looked, for a heartbeat, like home.
To Be Continued... And Happy New Years!