The council chamber was colder than usual. The air felt thinner, drier, as though even the aether didn't dare settle here. I stood before the elders, still dressed in my training robes, sweat clinging to my skin beneath the fabric. The room itself was a vault of polished obsidian, the walls inscribed with the names of Vorians long ascended—warriors, saints, monsters.
Elder Rhys sat at the head of the chamber, his posture impossibly straight, his eyes sharp as blades forged in vacuum. His robe shimmered faintly, embroidered with constellations that shifted with every breath he took. To his left sat Elder Kalen, lean and grey-eyed, his fingers stained with ink from years of scribing forbidden formations. On Rhys's right, Elder Mirei watched me with cool detachment, her white hair pinned back, her aura coiled like a serpent waiting to strike.
"You've grown," Elder Mirei said finally. Her voice was soft but carried like a blade gliding across silk. "Too fast. But not poorly."
Elder Kalen exhaled through his nose. "Your talents draw attention. Not all of it welcome. The other heirs see you as a threat—and rightly so."
I met their gazes in silence. There was no need to reply. I already knew this. Every look cast in my direction held the weight of ambition, of fear, of calculation.
"The Great Proving awaits you when you reach ten," Rhys continued. "Only four years away. The others are not idle. They train in secret realms, forge contracts with ancient beasts, harvest forbidden essences from sealed domains."
"They whisper in shadows," Mirei added, "plotting to make sure you never reach that age. Assassins are being groomed specifically to study your weaknesses. Saboteurs have been planted among the lesser branches of our clan."
Kalen leaned forward slightly, his eyes boring into mine. "Are you ready for that? For a war not of blades but of will, of poison, of silence?"
"Yes," I said.
It was all I needed to say.
Elder Rhys reached beneath his robes and withdrew three talismans. They shimmered faintly with runes etched in silver flame, pulsing with restrained power.
"These hold your father's strike," he said. "Three uses each. One strike of Stellar Rebirth. Enough to maim or kill most below the cosmic domain level. Defense and attack. Use them wisely. Give them only to those who would die before betraying you."
I bowed and accepted them. The weight of them grounded me. They were alive with stellar resonance, each one like a fragment of my father's legacy.
"Build your circle," Mirei said. "Choose well. They will be the difference between survival and erasure."
"Train harder. Think deeper. Trust slower," Kalen murmured, his voice now lower, almost paternal. "One wrong choice, and everything you are could be used against you."
I turned without a word and left them in silence.
That night, the seal on my dantian loosened.
In my private chamber, I sat beneath the ceiling painted with constellations, feeling the slow, aching thrum in my core. For years, aether had slipped past me like light through a broken window. Now, it gathered around me, responding to my breath.
Aether flowed into my body, not violently, but with coiled grace, like silk catching fire. My bones trembled. My veins hummed.
Something within me shifted. A seed formed bright, dense, alive. My Star Seed. It glowed beneath my sternum like a second heart.
I closed my eyes and saw it then: a great celestial staircase spiraling up into darkness, each step carved from divine resonance. And I was only at the first.
This is only the beginning.
Over the next three days, I observed my circle.
Lior moved like poetry laced with venom. In his lab, the air shimmered with toxin and life, the pungent scent of crushed herbs, oils, and something more arcane, his blood. He could control its potency like an artist wielding ink, and already, his healing tonics were sought by clan members.
River was serene in the Time Garden, where hours bent to will and seconds stretched across eternities. His chrono physique glimmered faintly with every breath, each inhale slowing the world around him. I watched him suspend a falling petal mid-air, reverse its fall, then let it drift anew.
Sen sat hunched in her forge-lab, weaving spatial compression threads so fine they shimmered like dew spun from void silk. She barely looked up when I entered, only offered a quiet smirk as she folded a crystal vault into something smaller than a pebble.
Astoria delivered reports with precision. Her intelligence network grew faster than expected. She tracked movements, whispered intentions, assassination attempts that fizzled out before reaching me. One child from a minor clan had already died testing a poisonous wine meant for me.
I gave each of my generals a talisman—one for Lior, one for River, one for Sen. I said nothing. Neither did they. But I saw the shift in their eyes, the moment something clicked.
They were mine now.
Later that night, I sat in my chamber, the polished obsidian wall reflecting a face too beautiful for peace. I stared into it until the shape blurred, until the whispers returned.
Fox demon.
Seductive freak.
Vessel.
They thought I couldn't hear. I heard everything.
Every insult, every jealous hiss spat in my absence. I was five. I should have been a child. Instead, I was a legend in the making. And my beauty, they said, made me weak. Made me obscene. Made me something to be hidden, possessed, ruined.
But why does beauty make people cruel?
The answer came like a whisper.
Because they cannot possess it. Because they cannot control it. Because I am what they are not.
I leaned back and closed my eyes.
And the dream came.
I stood in a field of blood. The sky above me pulsed with black stars that screamed in silence. Around me loomed figures cloaked in divine fire, their forms shifting between memory and prophecy. They had no faces, but I knew them. I felt it. They had known me before I had a name.
One stepped forward.
"Return."
Another moved through the mist.
"Remember."
The third reached out, placing its palm above my heart.
"Reclaim."
I woke in the dark, breath ragged, palms faintly aglow with starfire. The echoes of their voices curled in the corners of my mind like smoke that would never dissipate.
And I knew, without doubt, that the Eldar Realm had not forgotten me.
Not at all.