Reborn with the architect system : I will get my revenge Resolve

I feel the weight of him more than his words.

"I hate him. I hate him so much," Lucien mumbles against my shoulder, his voice flat as soone reading a curse. He doesn't an the breath of a child; he ans it like a verdict.

"Keep breathing," I tell him, steady because the rest of the part that can't afford to break needs to be steady. "Hang on, buddy. We're almost at your room."

No answer. His head lolls; his eyes are closed and pale in a way that makes my stomach go cold. Aria is at my side without a sound, fingers tight on the strap of the blanket. We move through Valecrest corridors that sll like old paper and candlewax. Servants steal glances.

We get him to the bed. I lower him carefully because even broken, he is ours and Aria orders the maid like a blade. "Cold water. Towel. Now." The maid scatters, clumsy, terrified. Lucien's chest rises shallow and slow; sweat beads at his hairline.

We sit opposite one another, the way we used to sit across the table as children, except now the table is a bed and the things between us aren't toys but guilt and fury.

"You should rest," Aria says, voice small. She's not small when she's angry; she's small when sothing bigger than anger has settled on her. "He needs sleep."

"He hates Father." I can't stop the truth from coming out. It's not an accusation I'm stating fact. Lucien's breath ticks like a weak clock.

"Not too much," Aria mutters, like she'd argue the edge off the sentence. Then she looks at him, at the bruise shaping his cheek, the dry blood at his lip. "It's not his fault."

I wish it were that simple. "It is his fault he was born Valecrest," I say, and before my words taste like betrayal I soften them. "But not the fault of the hurt. That's Father's doing. He punishes what reminds him. Lucien being alive is a reminder of when mother died ."

Aria's fingers find his hand and squeeze. "It wasn't supposed to be this way. Father he was not like this. We were happy especially with mother " The na lands between us like a bell. Her voice breaks, then hardens. "We can't make him love what he's lost, Darius. But we can make sure no one else touches Lucien."

That last cos out in a hiss. I nod once, because plans are the only thing that anchor when rage wobbles the world. "We get stronger. Faster. Ascendant," I say, tasting the word as if it were iron. "If we make Ascendant, we can build walls he can't punch through."

Aria's eyes turn cold, cutting through every weakness. "Ascendants or die trying." She says it like a vow and a blueprint. There's no lodrama here. There is only the chanics of survival.

"Speaking of which, it's about ti we talk about what happened at the trials ." Aria said. " How did our brother develop not only lightening but lightening aether that humans are incapable of using ". I imdiately understood what Aria was talking about.

"Not only that he combined our dark aura with the lightening aether. It has never been done in history ".

Aria leans in. Her breath fogs the projection for a second. "He used aether and aura together, two very unlike power sources" she whispers. "Gods. Who taught him that? When did he learn to… invent?"

"When we were gone," I say. The admission tastes like failure. "He didn't sit in so nursery eating porridge. He studied while we were off doing court dances and pushing for alliances. He grew in ways we didn't expect."

"Genius," Aria says, the word almost a laugh. "It's genius wrapped in danger." She stares at Lucien as though cataloguing all the ways to protect him. "Combine two sources aether and aura and you get… sothing new. Sothing no one saw coming."

My chest tightens with a violence I pretend not to feel. Pride is ugly and sharp; fear is cleaner. "That's why they'll co after him harder," I say. "They'll see him as an asset or a threat, depending on what they need. Father will use the excuse of sha to sharpen his blade."

Aria's hand curls until her knuckles pale. "He hates Father," she says, softer now. "Not us. Not really." The pity in the confession is stingingly private. "He hates what Father beca. He hates that Father turned our house into a furnace where only fire can survive."

I think of Mother how she used to hum while polishing sigils, how she kissed the younger children even with blood under her nails. If she'd lived, we would not be here. We would have been a house with a heartbeat, not a mausoleum with armor.

"We protect him," I say. The sentence is a plan. The sentence becos a command to myself. "From Father. From Rhazar. From anyone who reaches for him with teeth."

Aria's mouth pulls. "They will die," she says. The voice is small but there's no kindness in it. "For Mother."

I repeat it with her, because the vow tastes right on the tongue: "For Mother." We say it together, two words and a contract.

I don't pretend I understand all of Lucien's choices. He's prickly, cold, and reckless in a way that makes my skin crawl. He saved himself with calculations that would have let others burn. He used people. He admitted it. But none of that changes the fact that he is ours. That when the world stacked itself to crush us, he kept breathing.

Aria presses the towel to his brow, her jaw set. "We'll start tonight," she says. "Alfred will rotate guards differently. I'll call in favors. We'll keep him near the inner chambers. We'll....."

"Train," I finish for her. "Harder. Faster."

We speak logistics because that's what keeps us from breaking. Fury is a fuel; thod is an engine. We will make ourselves into a force field around him — not out of blind love but because we are practical and cruel in the only way that saves: we plan.

Before I leave his room, before I let the house return to its quiet, I crouch and press my forehead to Lucien's temple. He's warm, breathing in that thin, animal way of soone on the edge between sleep and waking.

"You'll be safe," I whisper, though I don't feel certain. "We'll be monsters if we must."

Aria's hand covers mine. We do not cry. We fold our grief into sothing harder and make it work.

We will make Ascendants. We will beco the shields that Father would not be.

We will make them pay for our Mother , for the boy on the field, for every small thing the world took.