daridaer_54
He believed people were predictable.
She proved him wrong - then disappeared.
Now she's back... and she might not be human anymore.
When prodigy physicist Adrian Vale agrees to judge the country's most prestigious pageant, he expects glamour, politics, and boredom.
What he doesn't expect is Contestant #7.
Lyra Solene - the girl who shattered his theories, stole his heart, discovered his darkest research... and vanished without a trace seven years ago.
She's more beautiful. More controlled. More dangerous.
And she looks at him like she knows exactly what he will do next.
As the competition unfolds, Adrian builds a mental equation to score each contestant - symmetry, intelligence, emotional impact. But Lyra doesn't just score perfectly.
She answers questions with phrases from his unpublished research.
Work he never showed anyone.
Work that suggests human behavior can be predicted with near-perfect accuracy.
Work connected to a classified experiment that may have destroyed her life.
Soon the pageant becomes a battlefield of psychology, obsession, and buried truths as Adrian's memories begin to fracture, Lyra's past reveals horrors no one was meant to survive, and reality itself starts behaving like a controlled simulation.
Because this isn't about crowns.
It's about control.
And someone has already decided who wins