Man, the sky above Silverwood had gone totally weird.
Used to be, you'd look up and see all those cozy little constellations winking back at you, right? Now? Nope. Just these inky clouds swirling around like someone spilled smoke all over the universe. The Starless—yeah, those creeps—were finally making their move. And they weren't exactly being subtle about it. The whole thing felt like that split second before a bar brawl breaks out—nobody's breathing, everyone's just waiting for the first glass to shatter.
Down in Threnos, Elara was sitting cross-legged, parked right in front of that glowing chunk of Liora. The runes on the walls, super old and probably illegal to touch, started humming, all of them vibing together in this weird harmony that she could feel deep in her bones.
And man, she could feel it now—the itch, the pull. Like the universe was dangling a choice in her face.
"You said I could become more," Elara whispered, voice all shaky. "But what does that even mean? Am I still gonna be me?"
Liora floated down, finally looking less like an alien disco ball and more like a girl made of starlight and nostalgia. She knelt, pressed her hand right over Elara's chest. "You'll be what I was. Part of the big cosmic quilt, you know? Not measured in years anymore, but in echoes. You'll lose your body, yeah. But your soul's not going anywhere."
Elara shut her eyes. Memories flashed—her grandma's grin, the Silverwood markets, Virella's quiet badassery. All that, but underneath? That aching urge to protect. To remember when everyone else had already moved on.
She got up. Just like that.
"I'll do it."
Everything blew up in light.
Some kind of wild melody just blasted out of the ceiling, shooting up into the sky like a sword made of song. Those shadow clouds? They flinched. The Starless lost their collective minds, the whole sky screaming.
Virella threw an arm over her face as Elara started floating up, her body unraveling into pure, blinding threads. Her voice—neither a scream nor a whisper, but something totally new—started singing every star's name she'd ever seen. The piece of parchment that kicked off this whole mess? Boom. Caught fire, except it wasn't burning—it was changing, the drawing twisting into a swirl of constellations, a roadmap for the next batch of dreamers.
Then, silence. Thick enough to choke on.
And then—Elara's voice came back, but it wasn't tied down by skin and bones anymore.
"I am the melody remembered. I am the fire that sings. And I remember the name of every forgotten star."
The Starless came crashing down, endless as bad news.
But so was the song.
Liora was there now, not alone anymore.
And under all those wild, shaken stars, way down in the mountain's heart, the last fight kicked off. Not with swords—forget that. With light.