The table appeared without fanfare.
Heavy oak, scarred and ancient, floating in a vast, starlit nowhere that had no walls and no ceiling. Twelve chairs. Eight occupied.
Mia watched from outside it all.
She had no seat. No body. She was only the quiet pressure behind the eyes, the soft space between heartbeats, the witness who had always been listening even when the voices insisted they were the ones in control. The scene unfolded in front of her like a play she had never chosen to watch.
Lilith sat at the head of the table, black smoke curling from her shoulders, eyes low and burning gold. Directly opposite, Mircalla gripped the edge of the wood with white knuckles, chin high, the perfect Monarch Doll mask still half-frozen on her face.
Around them the others had taken their places.
Carmilla on Lilith's right, hands folded tight, eyes soft with exhausted worry. Ami slouched beside her, one leg hooked over the arm of her chair, spinning a silver coin across her knuckles with restless energy. Alice sat very straight, still flushed from the dance, tears drying on her cheeks. Blanche—small, pale, childlike—curled in her chair like a folded paper crane. Noire leaned forward, elbows planted, lips parted as if she were still tasting something she both hated and needed. And at the far curve of the table, Bébé remained curled into herself, shoulders shaking with the same quiet, endless crying that had never really stopped since the beginning.
No one tried to comfort her anymore. They had learned it only made the tears louder.
Lilith spoke first. Her voice was velvet dragged across broken glass.
"We stay and let them fix us, we run and let them hunt us, we burn Triple E to the ground, or we wipe the board and forget. Pick one. Now."
Mircalla's laugh was sharp, brittle.
"Burn it down? With what? We go back. We survive. That's the only door that doesn't end with all of us in pieces again."
Bébé's crying hitched louder. A small, wet sound that refused to end.
Noire's fingers dug into the table until the wood creaked.
"I still want it," she said, voice rough and ashamed. "The gag. The plug. The order to *love it*. I know it's poison. I know what they did. But the body still… still craves the high."
Carmilla's hand twitched toward her, then stopped. "We can teach it not to."
"You can't un-teach hunger," Noire whispered.
Ami flipped the coin. It caught starlight and flashed. "We could just forget. New playlist, new rules, new everything. I'm good at starting over."
Alice's voice cracked. "I sang their poison to fifty thousand people every night and smiled while I did it. Forgetting won't erase that."
Blanche said nothing. She only hugged her knees tighter, eyes wide and ancient.
Lilith's eyes flared. She stood slowly. The chair scraped back like a blade on stone. Smoke thickened around her shoulders.
"Look at her."
She didn't point at any of them. She pointed past the table, straight toward the empty space where Mia floated, unseen, listening.
"Look at the one who's been watching this whole time. The one who never got a chair. The one who *hears* every word we say. She's the real body. She's the life. And you—" Lilith's gaze snapped back to Mircalla "—still want to drag her back into the machine that broke her open and called it love."
Mircalla's jaw tightened.
"I kept us alive."
"You kept us *useful*," Lilith snarled. She stepped around the table until she stood directly behind Mircalla's chair. One hand came down hard on the back of it.
"Open your eyes, traitor. Look at Bébé. Look at Noire. Look at Alice still tasting the venom she poured into the world. Look at what they did to us and tell me again that going back is mercy."
Mircalla stared straight ahead, refusing to turn.
Lilith leaned down until her lips brushed Mircalla's ear.
"Say it. Say *we were never broken, only upgraded*. Say it out loud so the witness hears how hollow it sounds."
Silence stretched.
Then the mask cracked.
A single tear slid down Mircalla's perfect cheek. She stood so violently the chair toppled behind her.
"I kept us *alive*," she hissed, voice breaking, and then she was moving—backing away from the table, from the starlight, from all of them—until the darkness swallowed her and she was gone.
The table fell quiet except for Bébé's quiet, endless crying.
Lilith remained standing. Smoke curled higher.
She looked once, straight toward the place where Mia watched, and gave the smallest nod.
The decision had not been made.
But the lie had finally been named.