Yuna's leg had healed.
Her mind hadn't.
Two days after the fall, Thess cleared her for training. The bone had mended, the muscle restored, the skin smoothed over like nothing had happened.
But something had happened. And Yuna couldn't let it go.
She trained harder than before. Earlier mornings, later nights. Wings manifesting at dawn, not vanishing until exhaustion forced them away.
The team noticed.
She could feel their concern through the CHORD. Worried glances exchanged. Whispered conversations that stopped when she approached.
She ignored it.
Insufficient. The word still burned. The fall had proven it. All her progress, all her Third Mark stability, and she'd still crashed to earth like a broken bird.
If she trained harder, she wouldn't fall again.
If she pushed more, she'd finally be enough.
Day twenty. Training ground. Dawn.
Yuna had been practicing flight patterns for three hours. Her wings blazed steady, but her body trembled with fatigue.
"Again," she muttered, rising into the violet sky.
A hand caught her ankle.
Marcus. Standing below her, those gentle-controlled hands wrapped around her foot.
"Stop," he said.
"I'm fine."
"You're not."
He didn't pull her down. Just held on. Anchor and concern.
"Marcus, let go."
"No."
Other figures emerged from the training ground edges. Aria wheeling forward. Silence phasing into visibility. Lyric, colors muted with worry. Chen Wei, arms crossed. David, clutching his book but present.
All of them.
"What is this?" Yuna asked.
"Intervention," Aria said. "Your training patterns over the past forty-eight hours exceed safe parameters by two hundred percent. You've slept four hours total. Eaten twice. You're destroying yourself."
"I'm getting stronger."
"You're getting desperate," Marcus said. "There's a difference."
Yuna's wings flickered.
The CHORD connections she'd been muting flooded back. Her team's emotions washing over her.
Fear. For her.
Love. Despite everything.
Frustration. Because she wouldn't listen.
"Let me down," she said quietly.
Marcus released her ankle. She descended, landing on shaky legs.
The team formed a circle around her. Not threatening. Protective. The way family surrounded someone who was hurting themselves.
"You're doing what I did," Marcus said. "Punishing yourself into being better. It doesn't work. I tried for six years."
"This is different."
"How?"
Yuna's throat tightened. "I fell. In front of everyone. After all that progress, all that talk about being enough, I fell."
"Everyone falls," Lyric said gently. "Even magnificent people. Especially magnificent people."
"I can't afford to fall. Not again. If I'm weak, if I fail..."
"Then we catch you," Aria finished. "That's literally the tactical function of a team. Redundancy. No single point of failure."
"I can't be the weak link."
"You're not weak." Chen Wei's voice was sharp. "You're injured. Mentally. The fall damaged more than your leg."
"I'm fine."
"You're lying." Silence's notebook appeared: WE CAN TELL. ALL OF US. YOU TAUGHT US TO FEEL EACH OTHER. NOW FEEL YOURSELF.
The truth hit like Yuna had hit the ground.
She wasn't fine. Hadn't been since the fall. The training, the pushing, the refusing to rest. All of it was running away from something she didn't want to face.
"I thought I was enough," she whispered. "Finally. After everything. I believed it."
"And then?" Marcus prompted gently.
"And then I fell. And I realized... what if I'm not? What if Mom was wrong? What if all of this, all the progress, all the belief, is just me pretending?"
The words cracked open something deep inside her.
"What if insufficient is all I'll ever be?"
Silence moved first.
She crossed the circle and wrapped her arms around Yuna. Ice-cold contact, but somehow warm. Present.
Then Marcus. Those massive arms engulfing both of them, gentle as holding eggs.
Then Lyric. Colors brightening as they pressed close.
Then Aria, wheelchair pushed to the edge of the embrace.
Then Chen Wei, stiff but present.
Then David, completing the circle.
Seven insufficient people. One embrace.
Yuna broke.
Not gracefully. Not quietly. Great heaving sobs that shook her whole body. Tears she'd been holding since her mother died, since the portal, since the first moment she'd read insufficient on a rejection letter.
Everything she'd buried under determination and progress and proving herself.
It all came out.
The team held her through it. Nobody spoke. Nobody pulled away. They just held on while she fell apart.
And for the first time, falling didn't feel like failure.
It felt like trust.
When the tears finally slowed, Yuna found her voice.
"My mother said I was enough. Her last words. And I've been trying so hard to prove she was right. But I keep failing. Keep falling. Keep being... not enough."
"Your mother was right," Marcus said. "Not because you're perfect. Because you're here. Still trying. Still fighting."
"How is that enough?"
"Because most people give up." Aria's voice was soft. Analytical mask gone. "Statistically, the majority of beings faced with repeated rejection stop attempting. You've been rejected fifteen times by academies, rejected by Valdris through low Resonance, rejected by death when it tried to take your mother. And you're still here. Still trying."
"That's not strength. That's stubbornness."
"Same thing," Chen Wei said. "In combat, the soldier who keeps getting up is more valuable than the soldier who never falls."
Lyric pulled back slightly, meeting Yuna's eyes. "Darling, you're not trying to be enough. You already are. The trying is what makes it true."
Silence's notebook appeared: YOUR MOTHER SAW WHAT WE SEE. SOMEONE WHO CARES SO MUCH SHE FORGETS TO CARE FOR HERSELF.
David's voice was quiet but steady. "You make us feel like we might be enough too. That's worth something. That's worth everything."
Yuna looked at them.
Six broken people. Six stories of rejection and pain and loss.
Six people who'd shown up at dawn to stop her from destroying herself.
"I don't know how to stop," she admitted. "The pushing. The proving. It's all I know."
"Then we stop you." Marcus's voice was firm. "New rule. Anyone pushing too hard, we intervene."
"Agreed," Chen Wei said. "We watch each other."
"Nobody trains alone anymore," Aria added. "Tactical protocol. Mandatory partner system."
Lyric grinned. "I volunteer to be everyone's partner. Rotating basis. I'm very supportive."
Silence wrote: WE HOLD EACH OTHER. THATS HOW WE SURVIVE.
"We hold each other," Marcus repeated. "Not just in battle. In everything. The falls. The fears. The moments when insufficient feels like truth."
He looked at Yuna.
"Your mother was right. You are enough. But maybe the reason she knew that was because she understood something you're still learning."
"What?"
"That enough doesn't mean alone. It means being brave enough to need people. And being there when they need you back."
The sun was rising.
Violet sky shifting toward silver-gold. The Academy waking around them.
Yuna stood in the center of her team, tears drying on her cheeks, exhaustion in every bone.
But something had shifted.
The desperate need to prove herself had quieted. Not vanished, probably never would, but gentled. Held.
Like the team was holding her.
"I'm sorry," she said. "For scaring you. For pushing you away. For thinking I had to do this alone."
"You don't," Marcus said simply.
"I know. Now I know."
She reached out. Found hands. Squeezed.
"One hundred nine days. We're going to reach Sixth Mark. All of us. But not by destroying ourselves to get there."
"Then how?" David asked.
"By holding each other. Through the falls and the failures and the moments when we forget we're enough." Yuna's voice steadied. "My mother believed in me when I couldn't believe in myself. Now you're doing the same. The least I can do is believe in you back."
Silence's notebook: FAMILY.
The word hung in the morning air. Simple. Profound.
Family.
Not the ones they'd lost or left or been rejected by.
The one they'd found.
Training that day was different.
Slower. Gentler. Partners checking on partners. Rest breaks that were actually taken.
Yuna flew, but not alone. Lyric created illusion bridges beneath her, soft landings if she fell. Marcus stood ready to catch her. Silence watched the futures for danger.
Team work. Actual team work.
And at the end of the day, when they gathered for dinner, something had changed.
The tension that had hummed beneath their conversations was gone. The careful distance between trauma survivors had collapsed.
They weren't seven insufficient people anymore.
They were family.
That night, Yuna dreamed of her mother.
Not the hospital. Not the dying. Just her mother, young and healthy, standing in a field of flowers that didn't exist on Earth or Valdris.
"You found them," Mom said. "I knew you would."
"You knew?"
"I hoped. You were always better at loving people than you were at loving yourself." Her mother smiled. "That's not a weakness, baby. It's a gift. You just needed people who'd love you back."
"They do. They really do."
"Then let them. Stop running. Stop proving. Just let them love you."
Yuna woke with tears on her cheeks.
But they weren't grief this time.
They were gratitude.
One hundred nine days remained.
The team was Third Mark strong, growing toward Fourth. The Ancient System hummed beneath the Academy, accelerating their progress. The Unraveling waited beyond the walls, hungry and patient.
But inside those walls, seven broken people had become something unbreakable.
Not because they were perfect.
Because they held each other.
And maybe, just maybe, that was finally enough.
[END CHAPTER 20]