Re-Awakened :I Ascend as an SSS-Ranked Dragon Summoner

A red sun hung low over a settlement, and Lila had woken beneath it every day for the better part of two weeks now, though counting days had started to feel less like tracking time and more like a habit she kept out of stubbornness.

High rises rose along the settlement’s central spine, dark metal catching what little warmth the sun offered, transport lanes threading between them at three separate elevations, cargo lifts moving in slow, mechanical rhythm from dawn until whatever passed for dusk on a world she still didn’t have a proper name for. Workers filled the streets below in numbers that made the place feel closer to a small city than a mining outpost, and yet every single one of them moved with the same closed, purposeful silence, heads down, conversations kept low, nobody lingering anywhere long enough to be noticed.

She’d learned the shape of it slowly, the way you learned a room by walking into its furniture in the dark.

The mining operations ran deep, that much was obvious from the vibration that traveled up through the ground at odd hours, low and constant, machinery working somewhere far below the surface she was allowed to walk. What they were actually pulling out of the earth, nobody had told her. What it was for, nobody had told her that either. She’d asked, in her first few days here, in the easy, confident way she asked things when she expected an answer, and had gotten nothing back but polite, empty deflection, the kind of non-answer that told you more through its shape than through anything actually said.

Nobody here treated her like family.

That was the part that had settled into her chest and stayed there, heavier each day. She’d walked in expecting, if not a welcome, at least the particular respect that came with a name like Rowe, and instead she’d gotten meals delivered to a small assigned room, a guide who walked three paces ahead and never once turned to actually look at her, and workers who glanced away the second her eyes found theirs.

It could only mean one thing.

A standing order. From the top.

She could picture exactly how it had gone, word of her arrival reaching wherever her parents actually were, some careful, measured decision made to keep her held at arm’s length until they themselves arrived to determine how this played out. That was how they operated. Always had been. Nothing decided in the moment. Nothing left to chance, or to anyone below them making a call that belonged, by right, only to the two of them.

She sat now in the small mess hall attached to her quarters, picking at a plate of something gray and nutritionally sufficient rather than actually appetizing, when a man appeared in the doorway.

”They’ve docked,” he said. ”Your parents. Come with me.”

Lila set her fork down slowly, the food forgotten, and stood, straightening her shoulders, rolling them back the way she did before stepping into anything that mattered.

She followed him out into the settlement’s main corridor without a word.

---

The landing platform sat at the settlement’s northern edge, open to the red sky, and a ship far more elegant than anything else Lila had seen on this world sat waiting there, its hull dark and unmarked, guards positioned at intervals but none of them approaching the ramp directly.

Lila stopped at the base of it.

The messenger who’d led her here peeled away without a word, leaving her standing alone, and for a long moment nothing happened at all, just the low hum of the ship’s engines cycling down and the distant grind of machinery somewhere beneath the platform.

Then the ramp lowered.

Two figures came down it, unhurried, dressed in tailored coats that had no business looking that clean on a mining world, and Lila’s whole body went still watching them approach, some old, buried instinct rising up in her chest that she hadn’t fully accounted for.

They stopped a few feet away.

Nobody spoke.

The silence stretched long enough that Lila felt her own pulse in her throat, and she held her ground, refusing to be the one who broke it first.

Her mother tilted her head, studying her with an expression that gave away nothing at all.

”Well,” she said finally. ”What did you do with your hair?”

Lila didn’t answer.

Her parents closed the remaining distance, unhurried, circling her slightly the way you circled something you were appraising rather than greeting.

”You’ve grown,” her father said. ”That’s for certain.”

Lila’s hands had started shaking, small and involuntary, and she pressed them flat against her sides, trying to still them before either of her parents noticed.

Her mother noticed anyway.

”Tsk,” she said, the sound sharp and precise. ”Tsk, tsk.”

”We’d thought, for certain,” her father said, ”that you’d be more decisive about what you actually wanted. We left you alone after your little betrayal, you understand, torn ourselves between reaching out properly and simply avoiding the whole mess entirely. Given your volatile tendencies at the time, we rather hoped we wouldn’t have to meet again under circumstances like these. Messy business, dealing with a daughter who doesn’t know her own mind.” He looked her over once more, something almost fond creeping into the assessment now. ”But look at you. Standing here, on your own, having come all this way. Whatever were we so worried about.”

”I came,” Lila said, voice tighter than she wanted it to sound, ”because I need to talk to you both.”

”Of course you do,” her mother said, smiling now, warm in a way that didn’t quite reach her eyes. ”Walk with us.”

They turned, moving toward the settlement proper, and Lila fell into step between them, matching their unhurried pace despite everything in her wanting to either slamming something into them using telekinesis or demand answers immediately.

”You’ve been kept rather in the dark,” her father said, glancing sideways at her. ”I do apologize for that. Standard precaution, given the circumstances of your arrival. We couldn’t very well have every worker on this world treating you as family the moment you walked in, not until we’d had the chance to properly assess where your loyalties currently stand.”

”And where do they stand,” her mother asked, light, conversational, as though asking about the weather.

Lila stopped walking.

Her parents stopped too, turning to look at her, patient, waiting.

”You let that boy,” her mother said, before Lila could answer, ”blind you with teenage infatuation. Choosing him. Choosing all of them. Abandoning our glorious work to go play hero with a faction that streams itself for public applause.” She shook her head slowly. ”And where has it led you, darling? Have you not confirmed it yet, everything we told you, everything you refused to hear?”

”The EDF is a fraud,” her father said. ”Rotted through with our own agents in every position that matters, and even so, even with all our reach, we cannot stop what’s coming. The Harbingers will wipe this species out eventually. Your little faction, Eclipse, stands no chance in the greater scheme of things, regardless of how many streams celebrate them.”

”And humanity has always deserved exactly what’s coming to it,” her mother added, almost gently. ”World War One. World War Two. On the brink of a third before the seed ever cracked our beloved planet’s core open. We were already doing this to ourselves, darling, long before anything alien arrived to help us along. So why fight it. Why waste yourself defending something already condemned by its own history.”

Lila said nothing.

”Even the strongest among us,” her father said, ”eventually loses to the irrefutable truth of the situation. Take your little friend, for example. Lucas Grey.” He watched her face carefully as he said the name. ”You may not know this yet, given how isolated you’ve been kept, but he should be dead already. One made certain of that. And there was nothing, nothing at all, your little friends could do about it.”

Lila’s breath caught.

”So,” her mother said. ”Why have you actually come to us.”

Lila closed her eyes.

”I see,” she said quietly.

She knelt.

Her whole body shook as she did it, some final resistance breaking loose all at once, and she stared at the ground rather than at either of them, unable to lift her eyes.

”I can’t fight it anymore,” she said. ”I want to be welcomed back into the family.”

For a moment neither of her parents said anything.

Then her mother laughed, soft, and crouched slightly to touch her chin, tilting her face up.

”You don’t need to beg, darling,” she said. ”You’re more than welcome.”

They walked her deeper into the settlement after that, through streets that suddenly felt different beneath her feet, soldiers passing by who no longer looked away when her eyes found theirs, and her father spoke as they walked, casual, informative, the way he always delivered the most devastating news.

”If you must know,” he said, ”Arthur is alive.”

Lila’s steps faltered slightly, but she kept walking.

”You weren’t part of the campaign that rallied against him,” he continued, ”so you should understand plainly, your former team’s effort failed. Completely.”

”I see,” Lila said.

”And with what we currently know,” her mother added, ”the Supreme General himself joined the fight against One.”

Lila stopped walking entirely.

”The Supreme General,” she said, eyes widening despite everything she’d told herself she was ready for. ”He got involved directly?”

Her mother sighed, almost bored by it. ”None of us accounted for him showing up. He did, regardless. From what our sources report, he injured One quite severely. Whether One actually survived the encounter remains unclear.”

”What that means,” her father said, ”is that the seat is officially open. The race is on. The Reigns are still occupied with an important mission for Arthur elsewhere, but we know full well they intend to make their own move for it, claim leadership of the Purge and the Endless both for themselves the moment the opportunity presents itself.”

”No matter,” her mother said, smiling faintly. ”They’ll find themselves beaten to that particular ambition.”

Lila looked between them. ”This world,” she said. ”Where even is this. What’s it called.”

Her father gave her a name that meant absolutely nothing to her, foreign syllables that slid past without landing anywhere useful.

”And this place,” she said, gesturing at the settlement around them, the towers, the constant vibration underfoot. ”The workers. What are they actually mining. What’s happening here.”

Her mother’s smile widened.

”Much more than that, child,” she said. ”You’ll earn the right to know in due time.” She reached out and brushed a strand of hair back from Lila’s face, the gesture almost tender. ”We’ve welcomed you home. But you understand, surely, that you have a great deal to atone for first. We’ll start with the small things.”

”What needs to be done,” Lila said.

Her parents exchanged a glance, something silent passing between them, and then both of them looked at her directly, steady, unblinking.

”Prove to us you’re no longer trapped in your own hubris,” her father said. ”Return to Earth. Finish what you should have finished four years ago. Destroy the military academies.”

Lila held his gaze.

”Then,” her mother said, ”you may return to us. Stand by our side. For the grand plan that’s actually coming.”

---

[Present day]

The Eastern Cardinal spread out beneath a sky that had never once looked as gray and industrial as the world she’d just left, and Lila walked its streets with a small, easy smile on her face, heading toward the harbor where Eclipse’s headquarters sat waiting beneath the waves.

’So Arthur’s alive,’ she thought, hands in her jacket pockets, unhurried. ’And Lucas may be...dead,” she said, pausing for a second and looking around her like she was being followed.

”Also, one fought the Supreme General.’

So many moving parts, threads tangled together across a war that had suddenly gotten much larger than the version she’d walked away from weeks ago.

’I lost my way,’ she thought, and the thought settled into her chest without any real weight behind it, smooth and rehearsed, the way something felt once you’d said it enough times to yourself that it stopped costing anything to think. ’Somewhere along the line I let a boy and his dragons and his soft, easy way of looking at me convince me the world was simpler than it actually is. That love could stand in for conviction. That a faction built on streams and applause could actually hold back everything that’s coming.’

’I let myself get comfortable and become gullible,’

’That ends now.’

The harbor came into view ahead of her, the familiar shape of the water, the faint shimmer where the facility sat hidden beneath its surface, and something in her chest tightened and loosened at the same time, recognition and resolve arriving together.

’I know exactly where I need to start,’ she thought. ’The academies. Four years overdue, and I’m going to finish it properly this time. No hesitation. No second-guessing myself because someone looks too attractive to resist,’

’Don’t worry father and mother, I’ve found my way back.’

She grinned, wide and easy, the kind of smile that would have made anyone who passed her on the street assume she was simply a woman glad to be home.

’Let’s finish what we started.’