Blacklisted

When the truth finally comes,

It doesn't knock.

It kicks the door in.

The broadcast went viral before sunrise.

Clips of the Trials. The votes. The threats. The names.

Within six hours, Ravenshade was trending across the country.

Within eight, the academy board released a statement of denial.

A "malfunction," they said.

A "student prank."

But it was already too late.

Because someone, someone in the shadows had downloaded the full drive.

And leaked the entire thing.

Raw. Unedited.

By midnight, the school was surrounded.

Not by police.

Not by the government.

But by people with cameras.

Microphones.

Stories.

The wolves had come home.

They called it The Ravenshade Leak.

Reporters swarmed the gates. Parents demanded their children.

And somewhere in the chaos… I disappeared.

I was blacklisted.

Officially "missing."

Unofficially: wanted by the remains of the Row.

They'd gone underground.

Cut off their feeds.

Burned their masks.

But they weren't gone.

Not even close.

Ezra, Isla, and I hid in the Hollow District, what was left of the old town below the school.

There, we found a hacker safehouse.

A place where the internet could still be bent like glass,

And no one used names.

Isla was healing. Ezra barely spoke.

I spent most nights staring at the flash drive.

The one we'd used to expose them.

I thought I'd seen everything on it.

Until I found the encrypted file.

Buried deep. Protected by a triple-layer code.

I unlocked it using my mother's old encryption key.

EVELYN17.

And what I saw…

Wasn't a file.

It was a video.

My mother.

Younger. Fiercer. Her hair braided back. A Row cloak half-burned.

She looked directly into the camera.

And said:

"If you're seeing this, Nova… then they came for you, too."

I stopped breathing.

"The Row was never about order. It was about containment. Control. Legacy. Bloodlines.

And if you're alive, it means the system failed to kill you.

Good. Now listen carefully."

She leaned in.

"They will try to rebuild. They always do.

So you burn the blueprint. You find the Architects.

And when they ask who gave you the right,

You tell them:

I was born with it."

The screen went black.

I didn't cry.

Not because I wasn't broken.

But because there wasn't time anymore.

I turned to Isla.

"How long do we have before they move again?"

She didn't blink.

"Not long.

There's a whisper that the Row's last founder is alive.

Hiding in a compound in the North District."

Ezra stepped into the light, a gun in his hand.

"Then let's finish it."

We left that night.

With no school.

No records.

No future guaranteed.

Just a mission.

A war.

A promise:

We exposed the truth.

Now we hunt the Architects.

And we end the Row for good.