They told her she was dangerous.
So she became the danger they'd spend generations trying to forget.
The stars were wrong tonight.
They hung low, too bright, too near as if drawn by something breathing just beneath the sky.
Something waking.
Elariax stood at the edge of the old courtyard, where the Academy once crowned its war heroes. The place had been abandoned for over a hundred years, sealed after a prophecy cracked through the stone.
But she had unsealed it.
With her voice.
With her thread-magic.
With the spell she wove by standing still while the world tried to unravel her.
Behind her, the three had come.
Kairon, still wearing his broken pride like armor.
Eren, hands clenched, storm at his back.
Sol, silent, his mind spiraling around her like a moon pulled by gravity.
They didn't speak. Not yet.
Because she was becoming something that had no language.
Not anymore.
The High Council descended from the tower like vultures, robes snapping in the cold.
"You cannot declare dominion over this place," one barked.
"It belongs to the Empire."
She turned slowly.
"No," she said. "It belonged to the world before the Empire cut its throat."
"What do you want, Elariax?" Kairon asked her then.
His voice shook.
Not from fear.
From awe.
"Everything they buried," she said.
"Everything they said I couldn't touch."
"The old throne?"
"No," she said. "The first one. The one built from blood and thread and memory."
She raised her hand
And the stars responded.
Not light.
Not fire.
But language.
Symbols written in constellations, glowing on the air, forming a spell the world had forgotten how to speak.
Sol stepped forward. Just once.
"If you claim it," he whispered, "you won't be just her anymore."
"I haven't been just her since they tried to silence me."
The Council shouted.
The earth shook.
And the sky answered.
A crown fell from the dark above.
But not a crown of gold.
A weave of stars and thread, inked in language too ancient to control.
And it landed not on her head,
But in her hand.
Because she would never kneel.
Not to take power.
Not to give it.
Only to unmake it.