The crystal door closed behind Raphael, leaving the chamber in absolute silence — only the silver glow from the vaulted ceiling rippled across the floor like a sleeping lake.
Remiel stood there, his hand trembling slightly around the Pandora's Box. The light seeping through its cracks was faint and wavering, yet it pulsed — as if whispering his name.
He walked slowly toward the crystal pedestal at the center of the room — where the body of a ten-year-old child lay in eternal slumber.
The boy's black hair fell softly across his pale forehead; his skin shimmered faintly, like mist at dawn. His lips were slightly parted, but no breath escaped them — a form without a soul, a vessel waiting to be filled.
Remiel gazed at the child for a long moment, then murmured:
"Perhaps… this is where you were meant to belong."
He placed Pandora's Box before the crystal coffin. His fingers trembled as a thread of light uncoiled from the box, binding him and the boy together — a filament of destiny.
Then, Remiel opened the box.
A whisper arose — not the voice of any mortal, but the collective sigh of a thousand sealed souls. They poured out like a silver wind, scattering into glowing motes that danced in the air before spiraling into one radiant orb.
The sphere pulsed brighter and brighter, until its light flooded the entire chamber.
It seemed to see the child.
Then, it contracted — light condensing into a single stream that burst forth like a vortex of stars and plunged into the boy's body.
The crystal cracked.
Light surged inward.
Remiel held his breath. He could feel the faintest rhythm — a heartbeat, fragile yet real.
The boy's skin warmed; the silver in his veins flushed to pink.
And then — his eyes opened.
They were clear as crystal, deep as the heavens newly made. He looked around in confusion, as though waking from a dream that had lasted centuries.
His lips parted, but no sound came.
Remiel knelt beside him, laying a hand on his shoulder. From his palm spread a soft radiance, wrapping them both in a ring of gentle light.
"You may not know who I am," he whispered, voice delicate as a bell carried by the wind,
"But from this moment forth, I shall guide you. You shall bear the name Elior — the Light of the High Heavens."
The boy blinked, his lips trembling as if to etch that name into memory.
Remiel smiled — a quiet smile, heavy with the solitude of millennia.
"Elior, live as a free soul. Belong to no one. Be bound by neither light nor shadow."
He raised his staff. White brilliance filled the chamber, and the crystal coffin dissolved into silver dust, drifting away into the still air.
Elior — now alive, now whole — stood amidst the sea of light, his gaze both innocent and luminous.
Remiel draped a silver cloak over his shoulders and said softly:
"From this day forth, you belong to Sector Six.
That will be your home — and I… your guardian."
The light swallowed them both.
When they vanished, only a faint shimmer remained — the last trace of a soul once sealed away.
Beyond, in the vast expanse of the Celestial Realm, something quivered.
A stray beam of light fell through the heavens —
a silent omen that the ancient order was beginning to fracture.