She was already there.
Cloud Terrace Four. Ninth bell. The platform where we'd trained, synchronized, rebuilt the containment, and learned what the word "team" meant when it was applied to something real. The stone still bore the marks — the divot from Nihil's first training strike, the frost scars from Draven's ice, the heat discoloration from Mira's eruption. The platform wore its history the way soldiers wore their scars.
Liora stood at the center. Crimson Oath in her right hand — not sheathed, not at rest, already drawn. The blade caught the morning light and turned it red. The dark steel — Ashveil iron forged with Embercrown fire — hummed with an energy I could feel through Void Sense at fifty meters. Not standard Aether enhancement. Something deeper. The blade had been forged by two women who'd poured their will into the metal, and the metal had remembered.
