Rehab for SuperVillains (18+)-Chapter 280: open

The door creaked open with a long, hollow groan, the rusted hinges protesting after years of disuse, echoing through the dim interior like a final, dying breath.

Liss blinked, straightening up from her leaned position against the outer wall, her fingers halting their nervous rhythm against her thigh.

She’d been pacing earlier, anxiety gnawing at her, but when she saw Tila step out, she froze, her breath catching in her throat.

It wasn’t just that Tila was upright and breathing, emerging from the box that had once been her prison without collapsing or raging.

It was the way she moved—fluid, unburdened.

No flinch at the sudden light.

No tension coiling in her shoulders like a spring ready to snap.

Her steps were even, deliberate, her black eyes forward and unclouded, her expression unreadable—but centered, grounded in a way Liss had never seen before.

Kael followed her out, quieter, his hazel eyes steady as he closed the door behind them with a soft click.

He said nothing to Liss at first, just gave her a brief glance that conveyed volumes.

It’s done. It worked.

"Tila," he said behind her, his voice low and calm, breaking the fragile silence. "One last thing."

She turned halfway, the breeze catching strands of her curly black hair, lifting them like dark ribbons against the faded sky.

The ruined orphanage stood at her back, a carcass of mold-crusted walls and collapsed beams, a skeletal reminder of horrors long buried.

Kael walked up, his movements unhurried, and unlatched the suppressor collar from around her neck with a practiced flick and then her cuffs.

They dropped into his palm with a metallic clink, the weight of restraint finally lifted.

Tila tilted her head slightly, her black eyes meeting his with a quiet curiosity. "You sure?"

He nodded once, firm. "Destroy it. All of it."

Liss blinked, her posture shifting as she pushed off the wall. "Wait, destroy—?"

But Kael had already stepped aside, his expression unchanging, trusting in the moment he’d built.

Tila stood still for a second.

Just one, her breath steady, her gaze sweeping over the dilapidated structure that had haunted her for so long.

And then the ground around her darkened—not from clouds overhead, but from something rising within her, a subtle shift under her skin, in the lines of her silhouette.

A pulse ran through her body.

From her shadow, spines of darkness erupted, long and sharp, like jagged limbs of a living entity—but they were just an extension of her.

She didn’t even raise a hand, didn’t need to.

The orphanage shuddered, a low rumble building from its foundations as if the building itself sensed its end.

Liss stepped back instinctively, her hand hovering near her blade.

"What the hell—"

Tila exhaled, a slow release, and the shadows exploded outward from her feet, racing in jagged lines across the gravel and cracked concrete, slamming into the orphanage’s broken foundation like controlled detonations, calculated strikes that knew every weak point.

The rotted beams cracked with sharp pops, splintering like dry bones.

Support pillars groaned under the assault, buckling inward.

Bricks crumbled in perfect sequence, cascading down in clouds of dust, as if she knew exactly where to hit—every scar, every memory etched into the stone.

Shadow tendrils—fluid, exact, like extensions of her will—pierced through door frames with precision, shattered window arches into shards of glass that glittered in the air, slashed through the old barbed gates that had once trapped her.

"I used to dream about burning this place," she said, her voice calm over the rising roar of crumbling stone, carrying clearly despite the chaos.

"But fire doesn’t reach far enough. It doesn’t dig deep. It leaves roots behind."

A spine of shadow ripped through the central tower, punching through the wall with a concrete-splitting boom that echoed across the desolate grounds, sending crows scattering from nearby trees.

Kael and Liss both stood well back now, watching as decades of rot and pain came apart under Tila’s controlled demolition.

The sky filled with dust, thick and swirling, blotting out the sun in hazy veils.

The shattered bones of the building buckled, toppled, and collapsed into itself with a thunderous finality.

It wasn’t chaos.

It was an execution—methodical, personal, each strike erasing a piece of the nightmare that had shaped her.

Each movement of her foot, every subtle twitch of her fingers, sent shadows crashing through memories buried in brick—the closet where she was locked away like forgotten trash, the wing where the Matron’s beatings had left invisible scars, the cell where they left her to scream into the void, alone and unheard.

Gone.

All of it, reduced to rubble under her command.

Shadow tendrils surged beneath the surface like underground cables, coiling and bursting upward, collapsing the final wall with a deafening crack that reverberated through the air, shaking the ground beneath their feet.

Tila walked forward, unflinching as debris settled around her.

One last corner remained—half-standing, defiant somehow, a stubborn remnant clinging to existence.

She paused, her black eyes narrowing on it, the place where the box had been, where her fractures had begun.

Her pupils dilated, her body tensed like a coiled spring.

Then she spun, her heel slicing the gravel with a sharp grind, and she hurled a whip of condensed shadow like a javelin—sleek, deadly, honed to perfection.

It struck the final wall with pinpoint precision, imploding it into dust and splinters that scattered like defeated ghosts.

Silence fell, abrupt and profound.

The dust hung in the sunlight like ash from a funeral pyre, slowly drifting downward.

The only sound was the faint creak of something metallic falling over, a last gasp from the ruins.

Tila stood at the center of it all, her curls tousled by the wind, her posture relaxed yet commanding.

What once stood as the monument of her trauma—a looming edifice of suffering—was now a crater, a scar on the earth that time would eventually heal.

Liss’s voice came quiet, laced with awe and a touch of disbelief.

"Holy shit... That was cool."

Kael didn’t speak, his hazel eyes staying on Tila—her shoulders relaxed, chest rising with steady, even breaths, no tremor, no aftermath of rage.

She turned to them slowly, her face wasn’t smiling.

Not quite—there was still a depth to her gaze, a quiet processing of what she’d just reclaimed.

But her black eyes were clear.

Focused.

Free.

"It’s gone," she said, her voice steady, final.

And behind her, where once loomed the towering shadow of the past—there was now only open sky, vast and unmarred, stretching endlessly ahead.