The deepest trenches of the abyss had no name.

There, beneath stone and pressure older than nations, a single will lingered.

It was vast, hungry, and patient, a mind sharpened by ten thousand years of captivity.

She was the last Abyssal, the mother of Thalassaria, imprisoned beneath the depths by her own daughter in a rebellion fought long before mortal memory.

She had been shackled in black strata and wards woven by her own bloodline, she had endured for countless lifetimes, whispering through cracks in her cell, mocking her daughter's reign.

Mockery cost nothing.

Time meant nothing.

She would break free in the end.

Or so she had believed.

Lately, the currents had shifted.

A resonance vibrated through the abyss, faint at first, like a heartbeat stirring in a long-dead corpse.

She had assumed it was the boy, the mortal lordling Thalassaria had stolen.

His blood smelled of ancient stock, of primordial sovereignty once thought lost to time itself.

She had thought perhaps the boy might be something she could mold into a key, a tool, a pawn to snap the chains that bound her.

But then the tremor deepened.

It was not the boy she had felt stirring in recent months.

She felt it in the marrow of the abyss, a cadence she had not heard since the time her people knelt before the masters of the universe.

It was older, sharper, merciless in its perfection. A living sovereign.

A living eidolon of pure descent from those the mortals called the architects.

Her laughter choked into silence.

For the first time in an age, her will recoiled.

Terror, raw and absolute, cut through the hunger.

"No…" The word echoed only in her own mind, a soundless scream swallowed by black water. "Not one of them. Not still. They died out millennia ago!"

She curled inward, trying to retreat into the pit of her prison, pulling shadows around her like a cloak.

She reached deeper, clawing into caverns of pressure where even her daughter's summons could not pry.

When Thalassaria came next, and she always came, no matter how many centuries in between her visits, sooner or later Thalassaria always visited her mother.

The once proud Empress of the Sea, now a prisoner of her own scion.

However, this time the mother would not mock, not taunt, not tempt.

She would hide.

For what was a throne compared to survival, if one of them still walked the world?

The abyss shuddered once more, and the mother of tides pressed herself further into the dark, wishing only to vanish.

---

The study chambers beneath Dawnhaven were lit not by flame, but by lattice-light.

Lines of geometric energy coiled along the walls, shifting like constellations mapped in motion.

Caedrion sat cross-legged on the stone, a slate of half-finished glyphwork before him.

His fingers traced careful arcs in the air, weaving sparks into narrow threads.

Each time he thought he had it, the pattern unraveled, scattering like dust in wind.

"Too rigid," came her voice.

He glanced up. She floated a few feet away, her bare feet never touching the floor, twin-tails of rustlight drifting as though in a current only she could feel.

For all her power, she looked absurdly young, the pout on her lips not unlike Aelindria when they had quarreled as children.

"You make it a cage," she said, frowning. "A lattice must breathe, or it breaks."

He exhaled, trying again. This time he softened his grip, letting the threads sway before coaxing them inward.

The lines curved, twisted, then flared into a faint, coherent sigil.

Her expression brightened instantly. She clapped her hands, the sound ringing like crystal struck with steel.

"Yes! That's it, big brother."

Caedrion blinked. "Big… brother?"

She drifted closer, settling beside him, her body glowing faintly in the half-dark.

The title had slipped from her like it was the most natural thing in the world.

He opened his mouth to ask, but she only curled against him, pressing one slender finger against his chest.

The world tilted.

For an instant, his vision flooded with light, not the soft radiance of glyphs, but a storm of ley-lines, veins of raw power that ran beneath his skin.

They burned and sang, alive with a greater resonance than he had never known he carried.

Her eyes widened. "There," she whispered. "I knew it. The cadence… it's ours."

Caedrion gasped as the glow dimmed, his heart racing. "What do you mean?"

She leaned back, studying him, her voice softer now, almost reverent.

"My mother's blood runs through your veins. I'm not sure how exactly... whether it was gift, theft, or something stranger... but it is there. Perhaps that is why your family can channel the same energy as my people, even though your kind never could in my memory."

The chamber felt suddenly colder, though the lines of light still pulsed around them.

Caedrion's gaze dropped, his breath uneven.

The Magi had always claimed descent from the Eidolons, repeating the old stories like scripture.

That they were heirs of gods. That their families carried a shard of divinity in their veins.

But if what this living Eidolon said was true… it wasn't divinity at all.

It was survival.

His people had not been chosen. They had been used.

The noble lines of mortal magi, all the lofty claims of god-blood and divine right, were nothing more than the remnants of servitude.

The bastards of a conquered age, children born of masters and their slaves.

His hands trembled.

He wanted to deny it, to shut the thought away, but the glow in his veins hummed with her words.

He couldn't.

Luckily She didn't press further.

Instead she tilted her head, expression oddly gentle for one who moments ago had been scolding him.

"That's why you're different. Why the leylines don't burn you like they would any other mortal. You were always meant to wield them."

Caedrion let out a shaky breath, staring at his trembling hands. "Meant to…"

Her smile was small, but there was pride in it.

"So you'll learn. Because if you're my brother, then you'll carry our light with me. And together…" She reached for the sigil he had made, and it flared to life under her touch. "…we won't need cages anymore."

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