The guards brought the containment unit closer. The corrupted crystal pulsed and flickered, its sickly glow intensifying as it neared her. Elsa’s bracer hummed in response—a discordant vibration that set her teeth on edge.
This is different. Wrong. The pure core felt like light. This feels like—
She didn’t have a word for it. Disease, maybe. Rot dressed in beauty.
The containment field dropped.
The crystal floated before her, unshielded, its corruption bleeding into the air like poison mist. Around her, males stepped back—even Xar retreated a few paces, his triumph tempered by the visceral wrongness of what he’d unleashed.
Touch it. Just touch it. How hard can it be?
Her hand trembled as she raised it. The crystal’s glow intensified, responding to her proximity the way the pure one had—reaching for her, hungry for contact.
This is a mistake. This is a mistake. This is—
Her fingers closed around the crystal.
Light.
Not the warm blue of the pure core, but something else. Something that erupted from the point of contact in waves that crashed through the chamber like the shockwave of a detonation. The corruption—that sickly green edge—screamed as it met whatever force poured through her skin.
And burned.
Elsa’s scream joined it, torn from her throat as energy ripped through her nervous system in directions she couldn’t map. The crystal fought her—fought the cleansing that was happening whether she willed it or not—and she felt every moment of its resistance like fire in her veins.
Too much. It’s too much. I can’t—
The light intensified. Brighter. Hotter. The galleries disappeared behind walls of white brilliance that seemed to go on forever, and somewhere in the chaos she heard voices—shouts, commands, the thunder of footsteps—but none of it mattered.
Nothing mattered except the battle in her hand.
Give in. Let go. Stop fighting and—
No.
The refusal came from somewhere deeper than thought. From the same place that had made her stand when she should have collapsed, that had made her bargain when she should have begged.
I am Elsa. I am a human navigator. And I will not be consumed by a rock.
The corruption shattered.
Like glass. Like ice breaking under spring’s first thaw. The green vanished, the discord resolved, and suddenly the crystal in her palm pulsed with pure, steady blue—clean and clear and completely stable.
The light faded.
Elsa swayed, the crystal still clutched in her hand, her vision swimming as the chamber came back into focus. Faces stared at her—hundreds of them, frozen in expressions ranging from awe to terror to something that looked almost like worship.
And at the dais’s edge, mere feet from where she stood, Sylas had gone completely still.
Not the stillness of calculation. Not the measured control she’d grown accustomed to. This was something else entirely—something feral, somethingwrong, something that made her primitive hindbrain scream warnings she didn’t have words for.
His eyes had changed.
The cyan had bled outward, consuming the whites, leaving nothing but that unnatural glow fixed on her with an intensity that stole her breath. His claws had extended fully, longer than she’d ever seen them, dark against the obsidian of the throne he’d abandoned.
And the sound coming from his chest—
Not a growl. Not a snarl. Something deeper. Something that vibrated through the stone beneath her feet, through the crystal in her hand, through every bone in her body.