The drone guided Nara outside and to a new building unlike the Chrysalis Wing,it led her to a dorm room , nestled in a quieter yet just as beautiful area within the freshman dormitory tower, with sleek reinforced metal walls embedded with mana stones that seemed to shimmer faintly in the ambient light. A panel beside the door is where she scanned her palm, the lock disengaging with a soft hiss.
Stepping inside was like entering a different world. Her previous quarters had been comfortable, futuristic, but impersonal. This… this was a suite. A spacious living area flowed into a separate sleeping alcove. One wall was entirely transparent that she was able to turn on and off, offering a breathtaking, dazzling view of Veridia Academy's sprawling, impossible landscape – floating garden terraces, lecture halls humming with energy, distant training fields where light flared with bursts of controlled power.
Below, she could see clusters of students moving between buildings and also filling into the dorms, this world was a strange blend of hyper-advanced tech and organic beauty. It felt less like a military academy and more like... well, a ridiculously high-tech, magical boarding school campus.
But the magic of it all was barely registered. The weight of the day the bus, the assassins, her icy transformation, the terrifying prophecy, the gathering of the Four Keys, Kaelen's void eyes everything started to crashed down on her the moment the door sealed. The carefully maintained facade she put up shattered. She slid down the cool wall beside the door, pulling her knees to her chest, her snow-white hair falling like a curtain around her face and started to cry uncontrollably.
Alone. Finally, terrifyingly alone.
The System interface, now seamlessly integrated into her perception, pulsed softly, awaiting her focus. With a trembling thought, she brought it up.
**[USER: Nara Silvaine]**
**[STATUS: Awakened - S+ Rank]**
**[AFFINITY: Frost Domain (PRIME)]**
**[MANA POOL: 850/850 (Regen: 15/min)]**
**[OBJECTIVES:]**
* **Primary: SURVIVE (Ongoing)**
* **Master Your Power (Ongoing)**
* **Integrate into Dawnbreaker Class (Pending)**
S+ Rank Frost Domain (PRIME) . It all felt unreal. power that could level a building right at her fingertips, it sounded like something out of the very novel she'd obsessed over. Hara Lee had obsessed over.
That name. It echoed in the sudden silence of the lavish suite. Hara Lee. The young Korean woman who loved spicy tteokbokki, who worried about rent, who found solace in fantasy novels on a crowded subway. Who died under the wheels of a bus because her attention drawn to a notification chime.
A choked sob escaped her. She looked down at her hands. pale, flawless, radiating a subtle chill. She willed it, and delicate fractal frost patterns bloomed across her knuckles, beautiful and alien. She touched her hair. Not dyed, not styled, but white as fresh snow, her body now cold to the touch. She remembered the reflection in the med-pod – the shocking beauty that wasn't hers. Now even more unlike her past self, made ethereal, glacial.
This isn't a dream, she thought, the realization hitting her with force.
Hara Lee was dead. Not just physically back in Seoul, but now almost mentally. The person who woke up terrified in Nara Silvaine's body that morning had still been clinging to fragments of Hara – her memories wishing that this was all some dream, her fears, her dreams, her wants, she can never go back to, she couldn't help wanting to cling to some hope longing for her old, life. But that clinging… it felt like trying to hold smoke.
The Dawnbreaker Class, the prophecy, the assassins, , Headmistress Vera's inscrutable plans… this was her reality it seemed now.
Her only reality.
There was no going back to her small apartment, part-time jobs, or spicy street food. . There was no subway to catch, no boss to appease, no mother to call. The life of Hara Lee was a closed book, its final chapter written in blood and screeching brakes on a rainy street.
Another sob, raw and painful, tore from her throat. She buried her face in her knees, the cold radiating from her skin turning the air around her noticeably chillier, tiny ice crystals forming briefly
in her exhales. She mourned. Not just the death, but the loss. The loss of her identity, her past, her simple, flawed, existence. She mourned her mother's face, already blurring at the edges in her memory. She mourned the taste of real kimchi, the warmth of her worn comforter, the mundane anxieties that now seemed like precious luxuries.
Her Aura flared unconsciously, frosting the section of wall she leaned against. The System pinged softly: **[Mana Fluctuation Detected]**.
Recommend Meditation Exercise to Stabilize.
Meditation? Stabilize? How could she stabilize when her entire sense of self was crumbling? The cold within her, once terrifying, now felt like the only constant.
Slowly, the storm of grief subsided, leaving a hollow, aching numbness that was somehow colder than her ice. She lifted her head, wiping frozen tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. She looked out the panoramic window at the impossible, beautiful, deadly academy campus.
Students laughed on a distant sky-bridge. Energy flared on a combat field. This was her world now. A boarding school for the magically gifted, wrapped in advanced tech, ancient prophecies and lethal secrets.
She stood up, her movements slower now, heavier with acceptance rather than terror. She walked towards a reflective surface on the wall – a dedicated panel this time, not just polished metal. The face that stared back was Nara Silvaine. Truly. The violet eyes, blazing with inner frost, held a depth of sorrow Hara Lee had never known, but also a terrifying, glacial resolve that Hara Lee could never have mustered. The snow-white hair wasn't a costume; it was a hers. The S+ rank wasn't just any label it was hers, This new chance at life that she has been given no matter how dangerous and how unwanted is, is now hers and she not gonna let anyone take that from her.
"Hara Lee is dead," she whispered to the reflection, her voice surprisingly steady, "I am Nara Silvaine." The words weren't a denial of the past, but an acceptance of the present.
She touched the frost-patterned door where her aura had left its mark. It felt solid. Real. She took a deep, shuddering breath, the air chilling as it entered her lungs. The System's objective pulsed
**[Master Your Power].**
The Dawnbreaker Class groups tomorrow. The other Keys were coming. Kaelen was here. The assassins were still out there. The prophecy loomed over her head her survival wasn't just a basic need anymore it was now something she had to fight for. It was about mastering the ice within. It was about becoming Nara Silvaine, completely .
She turned away from the window, the view of the campus now a backdrop to her new, life. There was no going back. There was only forward, the girl from Seoul was gone. Only the Heir of Silvaine, remained. And she needed to learn how to fight.