Lyric was failing.
Not dramatically. Not spectacularly. Just... flickering. Day after day, while everyone else crossed into Third Mark and left them behind.
The performer who could create anything couldn't create the one thing that mattered.
Stability.
"It's not working," they said, standing in the middle of the training ground, illusions sputtering around them like dying candles. "I've been trying for days. Nothing stabilizes."
Thess watched from the sidelines, expression unreadable. "You're forcing it. RADIANCE doesn't respond to force."
"Then what does it respond to?"
"Truth."
Lyric laughed bitterly. "I'm a performer. Truth isn't exactly my specialty."
"Perhaps that's the problem."
The team had gathered to watch. Not to pressure. To support.
Yuna felt Lyric's frustration through the CHORD. Sharp and hot, edged with something deeper.
Shame. The same shame that had driven them from Chromaestra.
Not good enough. Too unstable. Too much.
"Maybe you need a different approach," Yuna said.
"I've tried every approach. Meditation. Visualization. Emotional focus. Physical exhaustion." Lyric's illusions flickered wildly. "Nothing works. I'm stuck."
"You've tried every technical approach. What about artistic?"
Lyric paused. "What do you mean?"
"You're a painter. An artist. But you've been treating your power like a combat technique." Yuna stepped closer. "What if you treated it like art instead?"
"Art is subjective. Power has to be reliable."
"Does it? Your illusions have always been strongest when you're creating something beautiful. Not when you're trying to be useful."
Lyric went still.
"The studio," they said slowly. "I need the studio."
Thess nodded. "Go. Take whatever time you need."
Lyric walked away without looking back. But something had shifted in their posture. Not confidence exactly.
Possibility.
Yuna followed.
She found Lyric in the abandoned art room, surrounded by canvases and paints and the accumulated evidence of midnight creations.
"You don't have to be here," Lyric said. "This might take a while. Or not work at all."
"I want to be here."
"Why?"
"Because you were there when I fell. And when I broke down. And when I needed someone to tell me I was enough." Yuna sat against the wall, giving Lyric space. "My turn to return the favor."
Lyric's eyes glistened. "You're annoyingly supportive, you know that?"
"I've been told."
Lyric picked up a brush.
Not the illusion-generating kind. A real brush, with real paint.
"Chromaestra taught me that art was power. That beauty could be weaponized. Controlled. Deployed for maximum effect." They dipped the brush in crimson paint. "I spent years learning to make my illusions impressive. Spectacular. Impossible to ignore."
"But?"
"But impressive isn't the same as real. Spectacular isn't the same as honest." Lyric touched brush to canvas. "The illusions I create are performances. Even when I'm alone. Always performing for an audience that might not even exist."
"What would happen if you stopped performing?"
"I don't know. I've never tried."
The brush moved. A line appeared. Red on white.
"When I paint for real, with actual paint, it's different. The pigments don't shift. Don't change to please anyone. They're just what they are."
Another line. Another. A shape forming.
"I've been so afraid of being rejected that I made my entire power about controlling perception. Making people see what I wanted them to see."
"And now?"
"Now I'm going to try something different."
Lyric set down the brush.
They stepped back from the canvas, looking at the rough sketch they'd begun. Abstract. Incomplete. But somehow more honest than any of their illusions.
"I'm going to paint something real," they said. "With my power. Not an illusion. Not a performance. Something that exists because it's honest, not because I want it to impress."
"How?"
"I have no idea." Lyric raised their hands. "But I'm going to find out."
Light began to gather around their fingertips. The usual RADIANCE shimmer—flickering, unstable, uncertain of itself.
But instead of trying to control it, Lyric let it flow.
No direction. No intention. Just release.
The light spread across the air in front of them. Chaotic. Unpredictable. Beautiful in its disorder.
"This is what I actually feel," Lyric whispered. "Not the performance. Not the mask. Just... this."
The hues shifted. Red bleeding into gold bleeding into deep purple.
Fear. Hope. Shame. Pride. All of it visible. All of it exposed.
"I'm terrified," Lyric continued. "Every day. That you'll all realize I'm a fraud. That beneath the brightness and the confidence, there's nothing real."
The light darkened. Shadows creeping through.
"I'm lonely. Even surrounded by people. Because I've been performing for so long that I don't know how to just... be."
The shadows deepened. Pain visible in the air.
"And I'm so tired of being afraid. So tired of hiding. So tired of thinking that if I stop being impressive for one second, everyone will see that I'm not worth keeping."
Everything exploded.
Not outward. Inward. Converging on Lyric like a collapsing star, pouring into them rather than projecting from them.
Lyric gasped. Staggered.
For one terrible moment, they thought they'd broken something fundamental—shattered their power instead of fixing it.
Everything vanished.
Silence.
Yuna started to rise, fear spiking through her—
And then light returned.
But different now. Solid. Stable. Present in a way illusions had never been.
Yuna reached out and touched one of the floating shapes.
It was warm. Real. Her fingers didn't pass through.
"Lyric," she breathed. "These aren't illusions."
Lyric stared at their hands. Light flowed from their fingertips like paint from a brush, but the creations had substance. Weight. Reality.
"I don't understand."
"You made them real. By telling the truth about what they meant."
"That's not how RADIANCE works."
"Maybe it's how your RADIANCE works." Yuna smiled. "You're not just making people see impossible things. You're making impossible things exist."
Lyric experimented.
They painted in the air. A flower. Not an illusion of a flower. An actual flower made of concentrated light, petals soft and warm to the touch.
A bird. It flew around the room, each chirp releasing tiny bursts of golden light instead of sound.
A portrait of Yuna, hovering between them, capturing something the real Yuna couldn't see in mirrors. The determination. The kindness. The stubborn hope.
"It's beautiful," Yuna said.
"It's honest," Lyric replied. "That's what you look like to me. Not a performance. Just... you."
The portrait dissolved back into light. But something remained. The sense that it had been real, even if just for a moment.
"Third Mark," Thess's voice said from the doorway.
They turned. The professor stood watching, a slight smile on her ancient-young face.
"Kindled. Your power is stable now. And considerably more interesting than standard RADIANCE."
"What do you mean?"
"Most RADIANCE users create illusions. Tricks of light and perception. You're creating semi-real constructs. Light with substance. Art that exists."
Lyric looked at their hands. Light still flowed, but controlled now. Directed. Stable.
"Because I stopped lying?"
"Because you started telling the truth. RADIANCE responds to authenticity. The more honest your intention, the more substantial your creation." Thess paused. "But there's a cost."
"There's always a cost."
"Semi-real constructs drain more than regular illusions. And they're tied to your emotional state. If you waver, they waver. If you lie to yourself, they dissolve." Thess's eyes were careful. "You may be the first RADIANCE user in centuries to cross this threshold. That makes you powerful. It also makes you visible."
"Visible to what?"
Thess didn't answer.
That evening, Lyric painted a mural on the common room wall.
The whole team was there, watching light flow from their hands into images that weren't quite illusions anymore.
Seven figures. Not photorealistic. Impressionistic. Emotional.
Yuna with wings of silver light, smaller than she actually was but somehow more present.
Marcus, massive but gentle, hands that could crush mountains cradling something fragile.
Aria in her wheelchair, rendered as something between a throne and a command center, golden threads of tactical thought radiating outward.
Silence, half-transparent, but solid where it mattered. Eyes that saw too much.
Chen Wei, disciplined and sharp, burn scars rendered as badges of honor.
David, young and scared, but standing anyway.
And Lyric themselves, at the center, light exploding outward, finally visible as they actually were instead of how they pretended to be.
"It's us," David said softly.
"It's how I see us." Lyric stepped back, admiring their work. "Not the performances we give. The people underneath."
"I look terrifying," Marcus said. But he was almost smiling.
"You look like someone who learned to be gentle. That's not terrifying. That's beautiful."
"Interesting interpretation of my chair," Aria said, studying her figure in the mural. "I approve."
"It's how I see you. Not limited. Commanding."
"Accurate."
Silence pointed at her figure in the mural. Her lips moved: I look real.
"You are real. Even when you're phasing. Even when you're invisible. You're the most real person I know."
Yuna studied the mural.
Her figure was small but bright. Wings that seemed too big for her body, lifting her toward something just out of frame.
"What am I reaching for?" she asked.
"I don't know. You haven't found it yet." Lyric's voice was soft. "But you will. The reaching is what makes you beautiful."
"That's very philosophical for someone who claims to be shallow."
"Darling, I contain multitudes. Mostly dramatic multitudes, but still."
The team laughed. Even Chen Wei, which was almost unprecedented.
The mural glowed on the wall. Semi-real art that wouldn't fade.
Lyric had found their Third Mark. Not through technique or discipline or force.
Through honesty.
And maybe that was the point all along.
One hundred eight days remained.
All seven summons had reached Third Mark. The acceleration was working. The Ancient System humming beneath their feet, pushing them toward power they'd never dreamed of.
Seven insufficient people. One impossible family.
Finally, beautifully real.
Later that night, Thess found Yuna in the corridor, watching the mural through the doorway.
"Semi-real constructs," Thess murmured. "I haven't seen that ability in three hundred years."
"Is that good?"
Thess didn't answer immediately. When she did, her voice was careful.
"The last RADIANCE user who achieved this... drew attention. The wrong kind."
"From who?"
"From things that hunt bright lights in the darkness." Thess's ancient-young eyes were unreadable. "Teach Lyric to dim their creations when not in use. Before something notices."
The mural's light seemed to pulse. Just once. Like a heartbeat.
Or a signal.
Yuna stared at it. "What kind of things?"
"The Herald has many servants. Some are drawn to power. Others to beauty." Thess turned away. "And Lyric just painted a beacon that screams both."
One hundred eight days.
Suddenly it felt like less.
[END CHAPTER 21]