The world didn't end with a bang. It ended with a broadcast.
Seraphina stood under the flickering studio lights of Crestwood Academy's private AV room—the one used for gala recaps, headmaster addresses, and the occasional bloodless propaganda piece. Now it was a war room. Her war room.
The flash drive Eva handed over had been cracked open and decrypted. Every file reviewed, every voice confirmed. Proof of blackmail. Expulsions hidden behind scholarships. Quiet institutionalized deaths written off as accidents. The truth wasn't just ugly it was radioactive.
Killian stood beside her, silent but fierce. He hadn't forgiven her. Not completely. But he was here. That mattered more than words.
Lila manned the controls, her fingers flying across the board like she'd been born to hack revolution. Eva coordinated their drops scheduled leaks to every media outlet, every parent group, every student forum.
Seraphina stared into the camera lens, heart hammering.
"You ready?" Lila asked.
No. She wasn't. But it didn't matter anymore.
Seraphina squared her shoulders, the weight of every betrayal, every crown-shaped lie, falling away.
"They called me a princess. They meant it as a compliment. But what they really meant was: pretty. Obedient. Useful."
She inhaled.
"What they didn't expect was that I would see through it. That I'd remember Lila Carter. That I'd look at their secrets and say, 'No more.'"
She pressed the final button. The red light turned green. They were live.
"Crestwood Academy is broken. And I'm not going to let them hide behind silence anymore."
She leaned in. "To the families watching: Ask why your children were chosen. Ask why others disappeared. Ask why loyalty was paid in silence and punishment."
Flashbacks raced behind her eyelids Lila's blood on marble floors. Nathan's fevered confessions. Eva's voice whispering from the shadows. Killian's touch, burning even when he pulled away.
"We didn't start this war. But we're ending it."
The feed cut.
Silence.
Then the phones started ringing.
Journalists. Students. Alumni. Angry parents. Whistleblowers. The match had been struck.
Outside, sirens wailed. Not for them for the academy. Investigators and news vans pulled through the gates like wolves given permission.
Seraphina didn't flinch.
Lila slumped in her chair. "You just declared war on the people who write history."
Seraphina smiled, but it wasn't sweet. "Then we'll write it louder."
Killian took her hand. No words. Just fire in his eyes.
Eva looked out the window. "The real work starts now. This was just the blowtorch. The rebuilding comes next."
Seraphina nodded. She wasn't a pampered princess anymore.
She was the girl who shattered a kingdom.
And built her own.
But it wasn't over. Not yet.
Two hours later, as dawn painted Crestwood in hues of war, Seraphina stood on the old balcony overlooking the east quad. The silence was eerie, punctuated only by sirens in the distance and the occasional bark of orders from arriving authorities.
Killian joined her, handing over a mug of something steaming and bitter.
"You never said goodbye to them," he said.
She didn't ask who. She knew. Her former friends, her court of plastic smiles, the ones who loved her because it was convenient. The ones who vanished when things got real.
"They said goodbye first," she replied.
Killian nodded slowly. "You scared them. Not because of what you did but because you did it without needing them."
Seraphina sipped the coffee. It tasted like fire and regret.
"I was never really one of them," she murmured. "I was just... what they projected. A mirror."
He studied her. "Not anymore."
Lila burst through the door, breathless. "We've got another lead. Anonymous tip. Something about the Crestwood Foundation funds being laundered through offshore scholarships. It's bigger than just the academy."
Seraphina's stomach clenched. She'd hoped it ended here. Clearly, it didn't.
"Let's go."
Downstairs, Eva was waiting with files spread across a table like war maps. Connections. Transfers. Accounts tied to board members. All traceable.
"They wanted to make you a mascot," Eva said. "You made yourself a reckoning."
Seraphina felt the fire rekindling in her veins. She turned to the team. "We keep going. Burn every lie. Expose every deal."
She picked up a dossier, flipping it open. Inside was a picture of a smiling girl from a rival prep school.
"What's this?" she asked.
Lila leaned in. "Another death. Same pattern. Different campus."
It was bigger than Crestwood.
Seraphina looked to the others. "Then let's make sure this doesn't stop at the gates."
They nodded.
She wasn't everyone's princess anymore.
She was a symbol.
And symbols don't sleep.
As the chaos unfolds outside the studio sirens blaring, reporters swarming Seraphina steps away from the camera, her breath shaky but her gaze fierce. Killian reaches out, and for the first time in weeks, their fingers intertwine, a silent promise forged in fire.
She glances toward the towering Crestwood spires visible through the shattered window symbols of the old world she's just torn down.
With a final breath, Seraphina whispers, "They pampered me, used me... but I'm done being a prize. From now on, I'm the storm they never saw coming."
The screen fades to black, but the echo of her words lingers like thunder an unspoken warning and a declaration.