CITY TWO

Lateresa's offer was simple on the surface: leave City 5. Live in City 2. Attend school where fists in the corridor were not the daily tax on being less.

Inter-city travel was near impossible for someone like Val without her resources. He told himself he accepted to help Jacob—every sneer that landed on Jacob for helping once would stop landing if Val was not there to need help. That was the story he could live with.

The truth had other weights. He had seen her and failed to speak. Leaving felt like the only move that did not require courage he did not have.

City 2 was colder than City 5 in the way exclusion could be colder than violence—always there, never dramatic enough for witnesses. Housing in the common angel ring again. Classes that tolerated his presence without accepting it. Discrimination without beatings. Val learned to call that mercy because the alternative had been blood on tile.

He rose as Messenger through years that felt like stone grinding stone, outcast at every tier, never invited into command. Lateresa existed at the edge of his life like a star behind glass. He did not ask. He ran when she tried to help after other cruelties.

The move did not fix him. It only changed the shape of the wound.