The Weight of the Crown

The Last Mask

The Infirmary Breathed with Torpor, that kind of numb silence found only underground, where the world seems suspended between a before and an after. The faint odor of antiseptics clung to the walls like regret. The pallid glow of the fluorescent lights flickered intermittently, like a mechanical breath slowly dying.

Auren was awake. Not fully. Lying down without resting. Her eyes were open, frozen on the cracked ceiling above. Her thoughts drifted elsewhere, toward the shadows of the Capitol, toward faces she hadn't forgotten, toward a promise she never should have made.

And then the sirens screamed.

Not a drill. Not a simulated warning.

The raw, bestial sound of an attack.

A metallic scream that cut the air like a scythe. The ground vibrated beneath her. Voices rose sharply, military, urgent. The hurried steps of medics struck the tile with staccato precision.

Then the door burst open.

"Auren!"

Finnick.

He stood there, a silhouette cut sharp against the blood-red backlight of the hallway. He was panting, one hand braced on the doorframe, the other already outstretched toward her.

"Up. Now. We have to go. They're attacking."

She swung her legs off the bed. Her body moved, but her mind was elsewhere. Beyond the rumbling chaos above them, Auren heard something else.

A message.

The response to her call.

The Capitol was coming.

She had succeeded.

The corridors were buzzing tunnels. Families ran. Soldiers passed out weapons. The wounded were rushed on makeshift stretchers. The ceiling trembled in intervals, as if the sky itself were collapsing, floor by floor.

Finnick gripped her wrist. He no longer spoke. He carved a path through the panic like a warhound, focused, sure, relentless. Auren followed.

But her gaze wandered.

They're here. They understood. They're coming for me.

At the third fork, as Finnick opened a side tunnel leading to the lower shelters, Auren felt a pulse.

A fracture.

A moment.

She struck.

Her elbow connected with his ribs, sharp and surgical. Finnick grunted, startled, recoiled a step, loosened his grip.

Auren bolted.

She didn't make it three strides.

He caught her.

"No!" he shouted. "What are you doing?!"

She fought like a trapped animal, clawing, kicking, striking. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes, tears of fury, of truth, of everything breaking loose.

"Let me go! You don't understand!"

"Then explain it to me!" he roared.

And there, he saw it.

Something in her eyes. An emptiness. A crack.

A silent confession.

He let her go as if her skin had scalded him. Took a step back. Then another. He looked at her like she was a ghost.