The silence after the perfect copy's dissolution was not the dead silence of the void, nor the weary silence of exhaustion. It was the fertile, breathless silence that follows a lightning strike, the air buzzing with spent power and the scent of ozone. Elara stood alone before the gates, her knees scraped, her chest heaving, the real Shard pulsing on her chest like a second, triumphant heart.
From the walls, the ragged, off-key chorus of her people swelled, not a song of victory, but one of raw, relieved solidarity. They had seen their leader, flawed and real, embrace a perfect illusion and break it with the weight of her own humanity. The spell of the copy was shattered. The doubt it had sown was washed away in a flood of defiant affection for their own imperfect lives.
