CHAPTER 443: BREAK THE CYCLE! I

To break the cycle.

The words remained in the air like a philosophical challenge made manifest, their weight pressing against the contained reality of the private room.

Achilles looked up at the ceiling.

The surface above showed not plaster or metal but a view into the void between stars, where light itself seemed uncertain about whether to exist.

He was quiet for a long moment, his purple-gold eyes reflecting depths that had nothing to do with their physical properties.

When he finally spoke, his voice carried the quality of someone reaching back through time to grasp a memory that had shaped everything that came after.

"When I was young," he began, the words emerging with deliberate pace, "growing up in a little Colony called Neon, before I knew anything about lineages or cosmic inheritance or the weight that blood can carry...there was a bully."

He paused, swirling the golden liquid in his glass as if the motion helped organize memories into narrative. The Stellar Nectar caught light that shouldn’t have existed in the room, creating small auroras in the crystal.

"Marcus Vren was his name. Big fucker he was. Bigger than me by two years and fifty pounds, with friends who thought cruelty was the same as strength. Every morning, without fail, they waited by the school entrance. The only entrance. The path I had to walk to get to classes, to education, to any hope of a future beyond those colony walls filled with Advanced Humans."

His expression remained calm, but something in his eyes suggested the child who had faced that daily gauntlet still existed somewhere within the being he had become.

"It made going to school unbearable. Not just the physical confrontation...though that was bad enough. It was the dread. Waking up each morning knowing what waited. The sick feeling in my stomach as I approached those gates. The shame of other students watching as I tried to slip past, tried to make myself small enough to avoid notice."

Achilles set down his glass with a gentle click that somehow resonated through space.

"I endured it for months. Told myself it would stop eventually, that Marcus would get bored, find other targets, grow out of whatever drove him to make my life miserable. I tried different routes...there were none. I tried arriving at different times, they adjusted their schedule. I tried befriending his friends, they laughed and told him about my pathetic attempts."

General Lydia watched him with those amber eyes that had seen too much, her expression revealing nothing but her attention absolute.

"Finally," Achilles continued, "at a certain point when the bruises were getting harder to hide and the dread was becoming unbearable, I told my father about it."

A ghost of a smile played at his lips, though it held more edge than warmth.

"My father...who I didn’t know at the time was carrying the weight of an entire lineage and dying, who was hiding from forces that wanted our bloodline erased from existence...he just laughed. He laughed with the kind of understanding that comes from having faced far worse. He looked at me with eyes I now realize were already seeing possible futures, and he said...’If they hit you, just hit back. Otherwise, it will never end.’"

BOOM!

If they hit you, just hit back!

Achilles leaned forward slightly, his crown catching new angles of light that painted purple-gold patterns across the walls.

"I thought about those words all night. Part of me wanted him to do something...to talk to the school, to confront Marcus’s parents, to solve the problem for me. But he didn’t. He gave me permission instead. Permission to defend myself. Permission to stop being a victim."

"The next morning, I walked to school with my father’s words echoing in my mind. Marcus was there, as always, with his three friends forming their usual semicircle of intimidation. He started with his usual taunts, building up to the moment when he would shove me, trip me, take whatever dignity I had managed to gather overnight."

Achilles’s hand moved to his glass again, but he didn’t lift it, just traced the rim with one finger.

"When he reached out to push me, I hit him. Not a wild swing, not a desperate flail. I put everything I had into a single, focused strike to his solar plexus. He went down gasping, unable to breathe, unable to speak. His friends stood frozen, shocked that their dynamic had suddenly changed."

The smile that crossed Achilles’s face then was neither cruel nor kind...it was simply satisfied.

"I didn’t stop there. While he was down, while his friends were still processing what had happened, I kicked him. Once. Twice. Not enough to cause permanent damage, but enough to ensure he would remember. Enough to ensure that every time he thought about waiting for me at those gates, he would remember the taste of dirt and the feeling of not being able to breathe."

He finally lifted his glass, taking a measured sip before continuing.

"His friends didn’t intervene. They watched their leader gasping on the ground and made a calculation that bullies always make...that their loyalty extended only as far as their victim’s weakness. When I looked at them, they stepped back. When I walked past them into the school, they let me go."

Achilles set the glass down with finality.

"Marcus never waited for me again. His friends found other things to do with their mornings. I could go to school without worry, without dread, without that sick feeling that had haunted me for months. I broke the cycle of daily torment, of perpetual victimhood, of accepting abuse as inevitable."

He turned his full attention to General Lydia then, his purple-gold eyes containing depths that spoke of power beyond conventional understanding.

"I broke the cycle," he repeated, each word placed with deliberate precision. "But I also hit back. And I hit back hard enough that the lesson stayed learned."

The pause that followed was heavy with implication.

"So tell me," Achilles said, his voice carrying the authority of someone who had already decided the answer but was curious about the response, "do you not think I have the right to hit back?"

General Lydia met his gaze without flinching.

Her amber eyes held understanding...but not capitulation, sympathy but not agreement.

When she spoke, her voice carried the weight of someone who had witnessed too many cycles of violence to believe any of them were truly final.

"You have the right," she said simply, acknowledging the truth of his position without endorsing it. "No one who knows even a fraction of what was done to your lineage could argue otherwise. The systematic hunting, the betrayals, the genocide...you have every right to seek vengeance."

She paused, lifting her own glass to take a contemplative sip. The motion was unhurried, giving her next words the weight of careful consideration.

"But the way you choose to go about it...that’s where rights become complicated by consequences. Every action creates reactions. Every death creates ripples. Every act of vengeance plants seeds for future vengeance."

Lydia set down her glass and leaned forward slightly, her silver cloak shifting to reveal armor beneath that seemed to be made of condensed starlight.

"I cannot begin to understand the pain of a father killed," she continued, "Of a grandfather killed, of an entire lineage systematically erased. That kind of loss exists beyond my experience."

...!