The nursery was a cavern of ink and silver moonlight. Elma sat motionless on the edge of her bed, her small frame swallowed by the shadows of the high ceiling.
Her fingers were cramped into stiff, aching claws—the physical tax of faking a child's clumsy script for hours.
She replayed the morning's failure in her mind like a tactical debrief. Why didn't I just say I wet the rug? It would have been the logical move.
It would have reinforced the mask. But today, the "child" had felt like a suit of armor that had grown too small.
Her identity was already exposed to the woman in the mask. The secrecy felt redundant.
Yet the friction with Christa felt... wrong.
She tried to brush the feeling off as residue of Christa's poison—another compliance tool, carefully dosed.
She needed an anchor. Something soft.
She reached her hand out to the side, searching the darkness for the plush toy.
Her fingers brushed against something.
It was cold and smooth beneath her fingers, fabric woven tight enough to feel like armor.
Her heart slammed against her ribs with the violence of a caged beast.
Standing less than an inch from her hand, towering over the bed like a monument of bone and shadow, was the woman in the black-and-red cat mask.
"You are late in your reflections, D—66," the woman whispered, her voice a metallic rasp.
Elma pulled her hand back, her breath hitching in her throat.
When did she—? The thought died in Elma's mind. Her senses had failed to detect a single footstep, a single shift in the air.
The woman didn't offer an explanation. She simply turned and glided toward the far wall of the nursery. Elma found herself following.
As they approached the wall, the floor glowed. Luminous green veins, identical to the ones that had snaked across Elma's skin, erupted from the ground beneath them.
They formed a jagged, pulsating circuit that hissed with cold energy.
"What is this?" Elma asked, her hand flexing instinctively, as if claws still laced her fingers.
"A shortcut," the woman replied, her ceramic mask reflecting the sickly emerald hue.
Before Elma could process the words, the light surged.
There was no sensation of movement, only a violent, silent flash that turned the world white.
Elma blinked, her vision clearing.
The nursery was gone.
She stood in the center of a vast, open field. In every direction, trees loomed like jagged teeth against a sky she didn't recognize.
The only sound was the wind whistling through the branches and the low, rhythmic hum of the green light fading into the grass at her feet.
"Where are we?" Elma demanded, her voice sharp enough to cut through the biting mountain air.
"Far from the capital," the woman answered, her mask reflecting the starlight.
"Why?" Elma asked, her eyes scanning for threats in the tree line.
"To train you."
Unease coiled in Elma's gut. The woman's Presence was not just heavy; it was a suffocating inversion of space, making the vast field feel as cramped as the nursery.
With a casual flick of her fingers, a series of torches ignited around the perimeter of the clearing. The flames hissed with a strange, violet heat, casting long, dancing shadows across the grass.
"First lesson," the woman said, the metallic distortion in her voice sharpening. "You need to gather your Aegis."
"Gather?" Elma asked, her hands tightening into fists.
"It is all over these plains, roaming unrestrained," the woman replied. "You are not fully connected to it."
The woman stepped closer, the air seemed to thicken, pressing against Elma's chest.
"You must learn to pull it into yourself. You have to do this before you can even hope to bend the Aether."
Elma looked at her hands, then at the stones scattered in the grass. With a sharp tug of her will, three jagged rocks rose into the air, hovering with clinical precision around her head.
"I don't understand," Elma said, her voice small but firm. "My Aegis is here. I am using it."
The woman in the cat mask didn't move. She didn't even seem to breathe. "You are only using a fragment."
Before Elma could formulate a rebuttal, the world vanished.
The air was replaced by a crushing, freezing weight. The torches, the grass, the trees—all of it disappeared as a massive sphere of water materialized around her, suspended in mid-air.
Elma's lungs hitched, a reflex she couldn't suppress. She was trapped.
Panic, ancient and jagged, tore through her mental discipline. Suddenly, she wasn't on a field far from the capital. She was back in the facility.
Back in the Boiling Tanks, submerged in high temperature water meant to test the limits of her skin's thermal resistance and her lungs' capacity.
She could see the blurred faces of researchers through the reinforced glass, waiting for her to drown.
I will not drown.
The memory burned hotter than the freezing water.
Pop.
The orb splattered. Elma slammed onto the wet grass, the impact knocking what little air remained out of her chest.
She sat in the mud, soaked to the bone, coughing violently as she dragged air back into her starved lungs. Her golden hair, once pristine, now clung to her face like a shroud.
The woman stood over her, a silhouette of absolute silence.
"Imagine if that had been fire," the woman said, her voice devoid of pity. "That is how easily you go out."
Elma looked up, her green eyes shivering with a mixture of cold and cold-blooded fury.
"Gather your Aegis," the woman commanded. "Pull it back together. If you do not become a fortress within yourself, the next lesson will be your last."