Lyric painted at midnight.
Yuna found them in the Academy's abandoned art studio, a room nobody else seemed to know existed. Dust on every surface except where Lyric had cleared space. Canvases stacked against walls. Colors bleeding through the air in impossible patterns.
The CHORD had led her here. Restlessness in the emotional fabric of the team, a sharp edge of pain that Lyric usually hid under performance.
Tonight, the armor was off.
"You shouldn't be here," Lyric said without turning. Their brush moved across canvas, leaving trails of crimson and gold. "This is my private tragedy. No audience required."
"I'm not an audience."
"Then what are you?"
Yuna stepped closer. The painting was taking shape. A city of impossible spires, colors that hurt to look at, beauty so intense it verged on violence.
"A friend, maybe. If you'll let me be."
Lyric's hand stopped. The brush hovered over canvas, dripping gold onto the floor.
"Friends are dangerous," they said quietly. "Friends expect things. Consistency. Honesty. I'm not good at either."
"Neither am I."
Lyric turned. Without the usual theatrical lighting, without the performance, they looked younger. Vulnerable. The colors that always shifted around them had faded to something softer.
"You want to know about Chromaestra," they said. Not a question.
"Only if you want to tell me."
"I don't." Lyric's voice cracked. "But I think I need to."
The painting continued as Lyric spoke.
"Chromaestra. The City of Living Art. Where buildings changed color based on the emotions of their inhabitants. Where the sky itself was a canvas that the most powerful artists could paint on."
The brush swept across canvas, and the city grew more detailed. More alive.
"I was born there. Or appeared there. Like Silence, I don't remember Earth. Maybe I came through a portal as a baby. Maybe I was created. The details don't matter."
"What does matter?"
"That I was different." Lyric's voice flattened. "Even in a city of artists, I was wrong. My Resonance fluctuated. 2.8 one day, 6.4 the next. Impossible to train. Impossible to predict."
"Because of your emotions?"
"Because of who I am." Lyric set down the brush. Faced Yuna fully. "I'm not one thing. Not male, not female. Not stable, not consistent. My identity shifts like my colors. And Chromaestra... they couldn't handle that."
Yuna's chest tightened. "What happened?"
"They tried to fix me. Therapy. Medication. Training designed to stabilize my Resonance, which really meant stabilize my identity." Lyric's laugh was bitter. "Make me choose. Be one thing. Stay one thing. Forever."
"Did it work?"
"What do you think?"
Lyric returned to the painting.
"I refused to choose. So they chose for me. Exile. 'Your presence is disruptive to city harmony.' Their exact words."
The city in the painting began to darken. Colors bleeding wrong. Beauty turning sour.
"I was seventeen. Thrown out of the only home I'd known because I couldn't be what they wanted."
"Where did you go?"
"Everywhere. Nowhere. Wandered the edges of Valdris for years. Used my illusions to survive. Entertainment for villages. Cons for cities. Whatever paid."
Lyric's voice dropped.
"The performance started then. If people expected a show, I gave them one. If they expected a freak, I was the most spectacular freak they'd ever seen. Better to be hated for something I controlled than rejected for something I couldn't change."
"The armor."
"The armor." Lyric nodded. "Confidence as defense. Colors as shield. If I was always performing, nobody could see the person underneath. The scared, rejected, insufficient person who just wanted..."
They stopped. Brush trembling.
"What?" Yuna asked softly.
"To belong." The words came out broken. "Just once. To be somewhere I didn't have to perform. Didn't have to prove I deserved to exist."
The painting was complete.
Chromaestra in ruin. The beautiful city collapsed and burning, colors draining to gray. A single figure stood in the center, neither male nor female, surrounded by destruction.
"Did that really happen?" Yuna asked.
"No. But it's how I remember it." Lyric set down the brush. "Every time I think of home, I see it destroyed. Maybe because the home I wanted never really existed."
Yuna moved closer. Stood beside Lyric, looking at the painting together.
"The Academy isn't Chromaestra."
"Isn't it? Seven broken people, thrown together, expected to perform miracles. How long until they decide I'm too disruptive? Too inconsistent? Too wrong?"
"They won't."
"How do you know?"
"Because I won't let them."
Lyric looked at her. Eyes bright with unshed tears.
"You barely know me."
"I know you threw yourself into a fight against seven corrupted constructs yesterday. I know you used your illusions to protect David when he froze. I know you make colors appear in the air to make Silence smile."
Yuna held Lyric's gaze.
"I know you're terrified of being rejected again. And I know that fear doesn't make you weak. It makes you brave for being here anyway."
Lyric broke.
Not dramatically. Not with performance. Quietly. Tears sliding down their face, colors flickering erratically around them, all the armor falling away.
"I don't know how to stop performing," they whispered. "It's all I've been for so long."
"You don't have to stop. Just... let us see behind it sometimes. Let us see you."
"What if you don't like what you see?"
"Then we deal with it together. That's what teams do."
Lyric laughed. Wet and broken and real.
"You sound like a motivational poster."
"I sound like someone who watched her mother die and had fifteen academies tell her she was worthless and still got out of bed every morning because giving up wasn't an option."
The colors around Lyric shifted. Warmer. Softer.
"Your mother," they said. "You talk about her like she was everything."
"She was. She believed in me when I couldn't believe in myself."
"That must have been nice."
"It was." Yuna's throat tightened. "And now she's gone, and I have to believe for myself. It's harder. But I'm learning."
"How?"
"By finding people who make it easier to believe." Yuna touched Lyric's arm gently. "You're one of them, you know. Your colors, your performance, your art. It reminds me that beauty exists even in broken places."
Lyric stared at her.
"Nobody's ever said that before."
"Then everyone else was blind."
They sat together in the dusty studio.
The painting of ruined Chromaestra watched from its canvas. But somehow it looked different now. Less like destruction. More like transformation.
"The RADIANCE Attunement," Lyric said after a while. "Thess says it's about making people see and feel impossible things. Beauty as weapon."
"That sounds like you."
"It does, doesn't it?" A hint of the old theatrical voice returned, but softer. Genuine. "Maybe being too much isn't a flaw. Maybe it's the whole point."
"Maybe."
Lyric stood. Walked to the painting. Raised one hand.
Colors bled from their fingertips. Not illusion this time. Something realer. They touched the canvas, and the ruined city began to change.
New colors spreading. Life returning. The gray washing away, replaced by vibrancy that made Yuna's heart ache.
"Chromaestra rejected me," Lyric said quietly. "But maybe I don't need Chromaestra. Maybe I can build something new. Something that accepts all of me, not just the parts that fit."
The painting transformed completely. Still the same city, but rebuilt. Different. Beautiful in ways the original never was.
"That's stunning," Yuna breathed.
"That's hope." Lyric turned to face her. "I'd forgotten what it looked like. Thanks for reminding me."
They walked back to the dormitory wing together.
The Academy corridors were empty at this hour. Their footsteps echoed against ancient stone.
"The team," Lyric said. "Do they actually accept me? Or are they just tolerating the performance?"
"They see you," Yuna said. "The real you. Maybe not all of it yet. But they're looking."
"And you?"
"I see someone who's been hurt so badly they turned pain into art. Someone who's terrified of being rejected but shows up anyway. Someone who makes the world more colorful just by existing."
Lyric was quiet for a long moment.
"That might be the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me."
"Aria said something similar about me once. Maybe we're all just passing the kindness forward."
"Maybe."
They reached the dormitory hallway. Seven doors. Seven insufficient people. Seven broken souls learning to be whole.
"Tomorrow's training," Lyric said. "More drills. More fighting. More chances to die."
"More chances to live."
Lyric smiled. Not performance. Real.
"You're ridiculous, you know that? All this hope and determination. It's exhausting to watch."
"Get used to it."
"I think I already am."
They parted at their doors. Yuna paused before entering her room.
"Lyric?"
"Yes?"
"The painting. The rebuilt city. What will you call it?"
Lyric considered. Colors flickered around them, warm and soft.
"Home," they said. "I think I'll call it Home."
The door closed.
Yuna stood in the hallway, feeling the CHORD pulse with something new. Not pain this time. Not fear.
Connection.
One hundred fifteen days remained.
And the team was becoming something more than insufficient.
They were becoming family.
[END CHAPTER 14]