First Elder Vane stared at his trembling hands, the unyielding arrogance that had defined his centuries of rule finally fracturing into a cold, paralyzing terror.
He backed away instinctively, his heels clicking frantically against the scorched floor as Bella advanced. She didn't walk; she glided, her footsteps making no sound at all, surrounded by a faint, residual halo of silvery-white light that pulsed with every beat of her heart.
"You... you shouldn't exist," Vane rasped, his voice losing its hollow resonance, replaced by the panicked gasps of an old man facing a force he could neither quantify nor control. "The lunar flare was a myth... a miscalculation in the ancient texts. It wasn't meant to be channeled by a mortal bloodline."
"Everything your precious Council built was built o
