Night hung thick over Silver Star. In the abandoned broom closet at the lowest level of the Weaver's corridor tower, only a single contraption whispered—a tiny thermal-cycle rig, cleverly disguised as an old water heater. Its near-silent hiss was the pulse against which Elara worked.
By the thin vein of starlight filtering down through the vent, she bent over a quartz crucible and a smuggled set of precision glassware. The air was dense with the cool bite of ice-orchid, the copper-sweet of bloodstalk, and an odor like scorched star-dust, acrid enough to scrape the back of the tongue.
She was gambling on an alchemy never before attempted—an unstable catalyst drawn from the ragged notes of Breaths from the Blighted Soil cross-bred with her own alien knowledge. She named it the Starfire Solidifier.
Her hypothesis was a knife's edge: Leon's failed awakening and the surge of corruption resonance had not been the mark of emptiness but of excess. His core, she reasoned, possessed a rare and perilous high-resonance plasticity—a receptivity so intense it welcomed all power, spirit and abyss alike. In the ritual's flood, the stellar current had not guided but battered him, leaving a fracture into which the Abyss slipped its tendrils. That was the truth of his "pseudo-blight." But if a scaffold of unwavering stability could be thrown around his nascent core, if a shell could hold the flood long enough, then he might form the faintest ember of alignment. A Vigil's seed.
Failure meant obliteration—of Leon's spirit, of her disguise, of both. But the Wards of Ash were etched into her memory, showing her what stagnation cost. And so desperation became wager.
The brew demanded: powdered ice-heart jade (the prize she had stripped from Cecilia), mutant mosses famed for their tensile life-force and absorptive lattice, and a single drop of her own blood. Alien essence, foreign to this world's spirit, whose stabilizing quality was her greatest risk—and her greatest bet.
Days later, on a moonless night, she slipped Leon into the closet.
He gazed at the vial: a blue so deep it seemed a nebula spun within, flecked with crystalline frost. His gaunt face showed no hesitation, only trust carried to the point of desperation.
"Miss Elara," he said softly. "No matter the end, thank you for giving me the chance." He tipped the vial and drank.
Time stretched cruel. Leon convulsed, body caught between a freezing fire and a burning cold. His jaw locked, a low groan tore from his throat, veins straining against his temples.
Elara pressed her hands to his back. Not channeling raw threads—forbidden—but radiating the raw pact of her will: the stillness of wild hills, the stubbornness of stone. A steady pressure, guiding the potion's influence down into his dantian like water forced through fissures.
Then—his body jolted. His eyes snapped open. Deep within, a faint ember flickered red—not chaotic, not corrupt, but steady. Pure. He roared, fist slamming the iron locker beside him, denting the steel. It was weak, far from a Riftsmasher's might—but it was his. A core of strength had taken root.
He collapsed, drenched in sweat, yet his eyes blazed brighter than they ever had.
"I… I felt it! Fragile as a candle, but it's mine!"
Elara exhaled a long breath. Triumph mingled with exhaustion until she could hardly tell the difference. This was more than validation of forbidden lore—it was proof she could wrench open possibility itself. She handed him nutrient draughts and conditioning tonics, her voice sharp. "Hide it. Train slowly. No boasting. Not a word."
Leon nodded, clutching the vials as if they were scripture.
And then—the air changed.
A tide of will, vast and cold, swept over them. Pressure so absolute it seemed to make the walls creak.
Kaelan Blackwood.
He did not come in person, but his spirit did—an astral flood that filled the closet like water rushing in. Leon went rigid, face drained white, frozen in terror. Elara's heart stuttered.
The probe was precise. In an instant it brushed Leon's core—tasted the ember of spirit that had no right to exist, and the faint alien stabilizer that could not have come from the stars.
Elara clenched every muscle, braced for the end.
But the focus shifted. Swiftly, inexorably, the scan coiled around her, threading toward the bronze gear-pendant at her chest—the trinket Kaelan had gifted her, the beacon tied to his saintly core.
Through it, he read her. Her spirit's surface calm (masked by potions). Her fatigue and nerves (reasonable for a late-night session). Most of all: her fingerprint remained etched into his domain, a tether he knew had not frayed.
For a heartbeat she heard him—no words, but the sensation of a whisper, distant and self-assured, as if from the top of a tower. Satisfaction. Control.
He had sensed Leon's anomaly, traced the alien flavor. But compared to that, what mattered was her. That she remained within his leash.
And so he let it stand. Not because he had missed it. But because the leash was tighter this way.
The tide receded. The closet's silence returned, broken only by their ragged breathing.
Elara's back was slick with cold sweat. She understood his logic at once. A chill climbed her spine.
"He… did he notice?" Leon's voice trembled, fragile.
"Perhaps," Elara whispered. Her tone was steel. "But he won't act. Not yet. Which means our time is shorter than ever. You must train faster. And you must be more careful."
Kaelan's silence was not mercy. It was the sword left hanging.
Elara stared out at the night sky, black and fathomless. She knew now: every step they took was under a saint's gaze. And only in the cracks of his indifference could they steal strength before the trap closed.