She entered as a girl they feared.
She stood as a force they could not name.
The Vault was silent.
The kind of silence that comes before thunder, not after.
Most of the containment team had fled. One had gone mad. Two more hadn't stopped chanting prayers in broken tongues. And the last?
He was curled against the wall, whispering her name as if it hurt to say it.
Elariax stood in the center of it all.
Calm.
Straight-backed.
Cloaked in night-colored robes that shimmered like galaxies behind waterfall silk.
And her eyes they weren't just glowing now.
They were spinning.
Tiny stars, orbiting something that no longer looked mortal.
"Do you know what this room used to be?" she asked the last man.
He whimpered.
"It was a throne room," she said softly. "Before they buried it under spells and called it a cage."
And then
She stepped forward.
One step.
The entire Vault cracked like glass beneath her feet.
Across the Academy, a sound rang out
Not a bell.
A thread being pulled from a place that should have stayed tied.
And those who heard it?
All stopped moving.
Kairon.
Eren.
Sol.
They felt it differently.
For Kairon, it was heat like the forge of his blood was answering a call he didn't give.
For Eren, it was a storm behind his ribs old memories rising like ghosts.
For Sol, it was a voice. Not hers. His own.
"You've always wanted to see what would happen if she was set free."
Outside the Vault, the doors burst open
But not from explosion.
From invitation.
Elariax walked out. Barefoot. Bright-eyed. Beautiful in the way stars are: terrible and untouchable.
And behind her?
The Vault began to collapse.
Not in ruin.
In reformation.
It was becoming something else. Something hers.
"Where is she going?" gasped one of the students.
Kairon's voice cut through the whispers like steel.
"She's not going anywhere."
"Then what's she doing"
"She's becoming."