She woke to flame-colored sky and the taste of ash in her mouth.
The rooftop was a ruin.
Twisted metal. Shattered stone. The railing blown apart.
No sign of Aarav.
No sign of Kabir.
Just silence.
And blood — hers.
Maya tried to stand, but her leg gave out. The pain hit sharp and fast. Shrapnel, maybe. Something deeper.
She didn't care.
She'd failed the Order.
Worse — she had let him go.
The moment played again in her mind, frame by frame:
Aarav with the knife.
Not at her. Not at Kabir.
At the gas line.
She should have stopped him.
She could have.
But she hadn't.
And now the spiral was unraveling — and she might have been the hand that loosened the thread.
Hours later, she stood in the chamber of the Elders.
No words.
Just eyes behind masks.
"You were compromised," said one.
"Emotionally entangled," said another.
"You hesitated."
Maya didn't deny it.
To lie in front of the spiral was worse than disobedience.
It was weakness.
They didn't kill her.
Not yet.
Instead, they gave her one final command:
"Find him. Kill him. Redeem yourself… or disappear."
Back in her quarters, the walls whispered like they always did — memory stored in breath and shadow.
She stripped off the crimson cloak.
Unfastened the blade from her thigh.
Let both fall.
She looked at herself in the mirror and saw someone else staring back.
Not the assassin.
Not the perfect heir.
Just a girl with a crack running through her center — and something waiting inside the fracture.
On her bed, she found a scrap of paper.
No message. Just a single mark.
A serpent, carved into ash.
Not the Helix symbol.
This one was different.
Uncoiled.
Breaking its loop.
Her breath caught.
Only one person could have sent it.
Aarav.
A message, then.
Or maybe a question.
Will you finish the loop…
or break it with me?
She didn't sleep that night.
She sat at her desk with her blade in one hand and the old map in the other — the one she had once used to hunt Helix defectors.
But now, she redrew the lines.
Not as a hunter.
As a defector.
As a rebel.
In the morning, the Elders summoned her again.
They expected her to kneel.
Instead, Maya stood.
"I'll find him," she said.
"But I won't bring back a corpse."
The room stilled.
"Then bring us fire," an Elder hissed.
She smiled.
"You'll get more than that."
Maya Reborn.
Not their blade.
Not his salvation.
Something in between.
And if the Helix wanted her loyalty…
They'd have to earn it.