The laboratory was still floating above the canopy.
But that night, something had changed.
The air felt heavier. The silence too perfect. Then, in the shadows, silhouettes slipped between the metal structures—fast, precise, trained.
Two intruders.
The first guards fell without a sound. A clean pressure. A blade. A body held until all resistance faded. Blood never even touched the ground.
The operation was methodical.
Calculated.
They had come for one thing only.
ASTREA.
But one variable escaped them.
Tiana.
She understood before she saw. An instinct. A chill at the back of her neck. She turned, caught a reflection moving too fast in the glass, and her heart tightened.
Without thinking, she grabbed the data key.
Her other hand closed around the plant with white leaves.
A gunshot cracked through the air.
The bullet passed so close she felt the heat tear through space itself. The second struck her shoulder. The pain was sharp, brutal—but Tiana stayed conscious. She fell, breath knocked from her lungs, clutching the plant as if her life depended on it.
The key slipped from her fingers and came to rest a few meters away.
The intruders advanced.
Then the laboratory door exploded inward.
Elias entered the room like a shockwave.
There was no warning.
No shout.
He seized the first attacker and snapped his neck in a single, decisive motion. The body collapsed without a sound. The second raised his weapon.
Too late.
One precise shot.
Clean.
Silence fell again—heavy, almost unreal.
Elias turned toward Tiana.
She was on the floor, wounded, pale… but alive. Her trembling hand still clutched the white plant, untouched despite the chaos.
"Tiana…"
He knelt beside her, his eyes burning with concern. The data key lay between them, abandoned, forgotten.
In that moment, Elias understood.
She had not tried to save power.
She had protected life.
Even at the cost of her own blood.
That night, something changed within him.
He understood what he had become for the Order: a weapon.
And what he had just found, without ever seeking it: a reason to no longer be one.