Sera's POV
The riddle follows me for days, the way certain sentences do, sitting under everything else I'm doing until it's the only thing I can actually hear.
“Choose to be seen”.
I turn it over during training, during the long hours Dax and I spend working through the fundamentals of command he's now teaching me alongside combat, during the quiet evenings when neither of us mentions the temple directly because neither of us has anything new to offer it. I try it from every angle I can think of. Seen by the council, seen by Dax, seen by some part of myself I haven't fully located yet. None of it settles. None of it feels complete, the way an answer feels complete when it finally arrives. It's more like trying keys in a lock that clearly wants a different shape entirely.
It's an ordina
