Writer's POV
For the first time since the fallout, Diana sat alone in the cafeteria, and she didn’t hate it.
She liked the silence.
No snickers behind her hands. No eyes crawling across her skin like insects. No more waiting for the next whispered slur to find her ears like poison-tipped darts.
Just the soft clatter of metal trays that students carried around, the murmur of distant conversations, and the slow, rhythmic crunch of her chewing.
The cafeteria, once a coliseum of social warfare, felt strangely calm.
No one stared. No one dared.
Kael’s decree, his command that made her an official outcast at Ashmoor Academy, was meant to break her. But Diana wore exile like a shield.
She had an entire table to herself. The dressed pasta in front of her glistened under the flickering ligh
