10/1/28
6:00 AM
Everest woke up because he'd forgotten how to sleep.
He didn't wake with a start. Didn't gasp or flinch or reach for a weapon. He just stopped not being awake. One moment his mind was drowning in fragmented dreams of balconies and midnight bells, and the next he was sitting upright on a grey couch in a dim apartment that wasn't his, wearing clothes that weren't his, living a life that wasn't his.
The living room was modern in the way that meant "expensive and empty." Grey furniture. Glass table. Clean lines. No personality. The kind of place you stayed in temporarily while figuring out who you were supposed to become.
He'd been here for months.
Still didn't feel real.
His legs were crossed, arms draped wide over the couch back—a posture he'd unconsciously copied from someone he was trying very hard not to think about. His long black hair had come loose during the night and fell around his shoulders in tangles. His golden eyes glimmered faintly in the weak light from the television he'd apparently left on.
The screen was still playing the morning news.
He stared at it without seeing it.
England had thrown him out. Officially. Publicly. Spectacularly.
Everest Alexander Terissa was dead.
Good riddance.
He reached for the remote and started flipping channels, watching the headlines scroll past with the detached interest of someone watching their own funeral:
[BREAKING: Lisselotte Alexander Terissa cancels engagement]
[Prince Alexander Terissa: "Disappointed but unsurprised"]
[King Terissa III approves exile following HOUSEMASTER judgment]
[Alexander sisters remain silent on family scandal]
[Rumors: Multiple countries express interest in disgraced Icon]
He kept flipping.
More headlines. More speculation. More people who'd never met him explaining exactly who he was and what he'd done wrong and why he deserved everything he got.
His thumb hovered over the power button.
Then stopped.
A new headline appeared:
[USA: Reeze Monroe personally sponsors unknown Icon]
Everest exhaled slowly.
Unknown Icon.
That's what he was now. Not a prince. Not a Terissa. Not even a person with history.
Just unknown.
He could work with that.
He stood, tied his hair back into its usual bun with practiced efficiency, and walked to the balcony door. His black silk robe whispered against the floor—one of the few things he'd brought from England. Everything else was borrowed or bought with money he didn't have from a benefactor he didn't trust.
The balcony was small but fifty floors up, which made it feel infinite.
He leaned against the railing and looked out at the city.
USA.
It was... overwhelming.
Not in the way England was overwhelming—all history and weight and the oppressive sense that every stone had witnessed something more important than you'd ever be.
This was different.
The sky was still dark—not quite 6 AM yet—but the city was alive. Neon lights painted everything in electric blues, hot pinks, acid greens. Billboards the size of buildings scrolled advertisements for products he'd never heard of. Holographic displays flickered in and out of existence. The streets below were rivers of light—vehicles moving in synchronized chaos, their headlights blending into streams of white and red.
Even the buildings themselves glowed. Windows lit from within. Architectural lights tracing edges and corners. Entire skyscrapers wrapped in LED displays that shifted and changed like living things.
You couldn't see the stars here.
The city had replaced them.
Everest pulled out his phone—another borrowed thing, sleek and alien in his hand—and checked the time.
5:58 AM.
Two minutes.
His chest tightened.
Reeze had promised him this moment. Had called in favors, burned bridges, spent currency Everest didn't understand. All for this:
A chance to introduce himself.
Not as a prince.
Not as an exile.
As Everest June.
The name felt strange in his mind. Foreign and familiar at once. It was the name he'd been born with—before his mother died, before the Terissas took him in, before he became someone else's project.
It was the name of a bastard son.
The name of a madman's child.
The name of the house of June.
He shoved the thought away and watched the clock tick over.
5:59 AM.
The city's rhythm shifted. Subtle. Like the whole metropolis was taking a breath.
Everest's phone buzzed.
He glanced down.
[Reeze Monroe: Ready?]
He typed back with hands that weren't quite steady:
[Yes]
One word. One lie.
He wasn't ready. Would never be ready.
But ready didn't matter.
The clock hit 6:00 AM.
And the world went black.
Every screen.
Every billboard.
Every holographic display.
Every LED-wrapped building.
Every vehicle display.
Every phone.
Black.
The entire city plunged into sudden darkness, as if someone had reached up and switched off the sun before it could rise.
Everest's breath caught.
For three seconds, the city was silent.
Then—
Light.
Not gradual. Not soft.
Eruption.
Every screen in his line of sight—and there were hundreds—ignited simultaneously with the same image:
A face.
Porcelain skin. Long black hair tied in a bun. Deep golden eyes that seemed to glow even through the digital display. An easygoing smile that managed to look both welcoming and unsettling.
Everest was staring at himself.
But not the himself he knew.
This version was... polished. Professional. The lighting was perfect, catching his features at angles that made him look less human and more like something out of mythology. His expression was carefully neutral—not cold, not warm, just present in a way that demanded attention.
Below the image, text appeared in bold white letters:
[NEW ICON IN USA: EVEREST JUNE]
The words seemed to pulse with each syllable, growing brighter, larger, louder even though there was no sound.
Everest stared.
The city stared back.
His face was everywhere. On the massive billboard three blocks away. On the screens of passing vehicles. On the phone of someone walking their dog fifty floors below. On the holographic displays that floated in mid-air like ghosts.
Everywhere he looked: himself.
Not Everest Alexander Terissa, the failed prince.
Everest June, the unknown Icon.
The heir.
The bastard.
The Phoenix.
His phone exploded with notifications.
DING. DING. DING. DING. DING.
He fumbled it, nearly dropped it over the railing, caught it with fingers that had gone numb.
The screen was flooded with messages.
[Reeze Monroe: Surprised? Don't be. You're working with the only SUPERSTAR in USA. Welcome to the big leagues. ...You owe me one.]
Everest stared at the message.
Then typed, very slowly:
[Yes]
Not "thank you." Not "I appreciate this."
Just: Yes.
Because what else was there to say?
Another notification.
Different name this time.
[Unknown Number: Yahhō~! Everest June... ehehe, I didn't know you were THAT kind of June. Now I'm extra curious. Let's be friends, okay? ...Don't run away. ♡]
He blinked.
Read it again.
What.
The message was... enthusiastic. Overly so. The kind of energy that felt like it should be illegal before 6 AM.
He scrolled up, checked the sender information.
[Aya Norito - Icon, Japan (Exile)]
Ohh? I know this girl.
He'd heard the name. Everyone had. The girl who'd become a celebrity for being a fan—Lily Loco's number-one supporter, famous for her devotion before she ever became an Icon herself. Fourteen years old, absurdly young for the program, and apparently now in USA.
Of course.
USA wasn't just a country.
It was a dumping ground for the internationally inconvenient.
Exiles. Rejects. The too-young and too-mad and too-everything to fit anywhere else.
He fit right in.
His phone buzzed again.
This time, the notification made his stomach drop.
[HOUSEMASTER - OFFICIAL]
The message was simple:
[All Icons: Report to USA: STELLAR HIGH by 8:00 AM]
Two hours.
Everest looked up from his phone, out at the city that was still broadcasting his face on every available surface.
The sun was starting to rise now—barely, just the faintest hint of gold on the horizon, fighting to be seen through the neon haze.
He watched his own face on a billboard three blocks away.
The image flickered once.
Then dissolved into the standard morning advertisements—coffee, cars, the latest celebrity gossip.
Just like that, the moment was over.
But the weight of it remained.
Everest June was real now. Public. Undeniable.
There was no going back to being a prince.
No going back to being Terissa.
No going back to the boy on the balcony who'd thought love might be enough.
He was the house of June's son now.
And everyone knew it.
He turned away from the balcony and walked back into the apartment.
There was no point in delaying.
No point in hesitating.
He had two hours to get to Stellar High, and he'd learned a long time ago that arriving late was just another form of surrender.
He moved through the apartment with mechanical efficiency—showered, dressed in fresh black robes (because some habits were impossible to break), tied his hair back with the kind of precision that came from years of practice.
When he looked in the bathroom mirror, the face staring back was the same one that had been on every screen in the city.
But the eyes were different.
Tired. Hollow. Barely holding something together.
He smiled at his reflection—easygoing, pleasant, completely false.
There we go.
That's the one.
He left the apartment at 6:45 AM and took a taxi to Stellar High.
The driver recognized him immediately.
"Hey, you're that June kid! Just saw you on the—"
"Yes," Everest interrupted gently. "That's me."
The driver grinned. "Wild, man. My daughter's gonna lose her mind when I tell her I drove you."
Everest said nothing.
Just watched the city scroll past the window—neon and light and endless, endless noise.
By the time they reached Stellar High, the sun had fully risen.
But somehow, the city still glowed brighter.