'It is always safer to target the weak.'
She'd learned that before she could spell her own name. Safer to hit the girl with smaller hands, to blame the one who wouldn't talk back, to wound the quiet one before she had the strength to scream. That was human nature—nobles liked to dress it up in politics, strategy, diplomacy. But it all traced back to the same cracked root:
Find the one who seems breakable.
And break them first.
Her gaze didn't leave the shimmering script, but her ears were already working. Tracking breath patterns. The subtle shift of cloth. The cadence of silence behind her.
She would be challenged.
Of course she would.
Not because she was famous.
Not because she had enemies.
But because someone out there had seen her name in the top five and thought:
She doesn't look that strong.
The truth didn't matter. The blood she'd bled, the monsters she'd fought, the desperate crawl into the circle one heartbeat before the collapse—it didn't matter.
