Her gaze remained fixed on Sienna.

"Her power isn’t whole. It’s returning. Slowly. Piece by piece. Every step she takes, every choice she makes... it comes back to her."

Selene exhaled sharply, irritation slipping through.

"I know how reincarnation works, fairy. You don’t have to explain—"

"I wasn’t finished."

Eira cut her off, clean and immediate.

A brief silence followed, tension settling between them before Eira scoffed lightly.

"You’re getting annoyingly good at interrupting me," she added. "Next time, let me finish."

Selene didn’t respond.

Eira’s expression shifted, the amusement fading into something more deliberate.

"What I want you to see," she said, her voice lowering just enough to carry weight, "is not her power."

Below, Sienna had already begun moving forward without hesitation, without a glance back.

Cassiopeia followed moments later, slower, still recovering.

"It’s her choice."

Selene’s eyes flickered slightly.

Eira continued.

"Just like you, Sienna feels guilty and blames herself for not helping Phei—for doing nothing but watching it all happen for the last ten years." 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Selene stiffened.

"And while she had every reason to justify herself to step up and help him and squinch those bugs bullying him under her boot—Chaos forbade her, after all—she’s not wallowing in sorrow, guilt, and whatever self-pitying shit you’re drowning in."

A pause.

"She’s helping. She didn’t sit in it. Didn’t drown in it. She moved."

Her voice sharpened slightly.

"She acted."

Selene’s jaw tightened.

Eira didn’t soften.

"My lesson here is simple," she said quietly. "Get over it. Get out of your feelings. Learn something from Sienna."

And then she was gone—not with spectacle, not with distortion or grand exit, but with a quiet absence so complete that it felt as though she had never been there at all, leaving Selene alone with the weight of her words and the uneasy, undeniable truth settling into the space she left behind.

By the time the last tremors of void travel had faded from Cassiopeia’s bones, the world had already reassembled itself into something far more mundane—and yet no less tense, no less wrong.

They were moving.

Rows of silent vehicles stretched beneath a wide, open sky, their metallic bodies reflecting the pale wash of daylight in dull, indifferent glints.

Painted lines cut across the ground in rigid order, guiding motion that had long since paused, while distant structures loomed ahead—vast, glass-lined, impersonal, humming faintly with the quiet promise of transit and departure.

It was an airport’s underground parking lot.

And yet, even here, the air felt wrong for Cassiopeia from all the aftermath.

The invisible weight of what they had just done clung to them like the faint, acrid scent of smoke after a fire had already burned through everything it could consume. It lingered in the back of the throat, in the marrow of the bones, in the uneasy way the world itself seemed to hold its breath around them.

Sienna walked ahead without pause, her steps steady, measured, as if the transition from tearing open the skin of reality to crossing a civilian parking lot required no adjustment whatsoever.

The orb remained locked in her hand, still held with that same quiet, unrelenting grip—as though it was not merely an object, but something alive enough, hungry enough, to demand constant vigilance.

Cassiopeia followed beside her... to where Emily and Catrina were waiting for rest of Phei’s whole group. Melissa, Maya, Delilah, Victoria, Maddie, Sierra, Valentina, and others had already arrived.

Her eyes had not left the orb.

Not once.

It pulled at her attention in a way she could not ignore, her thoughts circling it, dissecting it, trying to understand something that defied every rule she had been raised on.

"...so, it’s true," she murmured, almost to herself, her voice low and distant with dawning realization. "a storage ring can’t hold a living being... that’s why—even after pulling the orb out—you can’t put it back inside the ring. Not while it contains her... the Lesser God witch."

Her gaze tightened slightly, the implications settling deeper the longer she considered them, cold and heavy.

Sienna didn’t even look at her.

"Captain Obvious," she said flatly, rolling her eyes with a faint tilt of her head, the dismissal effortless, almost bored.

Cassiopeia blinked once, as if pulled back into the present, then exhaled quietly, her attention finally shifting forward—but not fully leaving the orb behind.

There was a pause.

Then—

"What am I supposed to tell Phei?"

The question came sharper this time, grounded in cold reality, edged with something uncertain and brittle.

She glanced sideways at Sienna, her pace faltering just slightly.

"I’m supposed to report. I can’t exactly tell him everything that just happened, but I’m not going to lie to him either, so what do I—"

Sienna turned her head just enough to look at her.

Not fully but enough.

"Why would you lie?"

Her tone carried that same quiet indifference, as if the question itself was unnecessary, almost insulting.

Cassiopeia hesitated.

Sienna continued walking.

"Tell him everything that happened. Tell him we have the witch in a safe place."

A brief pause.

Her gaze shifted forward again.

"Just not—"

"Not your powers. I know." Cassiopeia cut in quickly, a faint edge of irritation slipping through. "I’m not a fool."

Sienna didn’t respond immediately.

A small scoff escaped her instead.

"Whatever. Tell him Dravenna has her. Under direct order of the Madam."

They reached the edge of the lot.

A black car waited there and it kind of looked out of place in the most deliberate way.

Sienna didn’t slow.

She turned sharply, her movement clean and decisive, and crossed the final stretch without hesitation before pulling the door open and slipping inside as if she had always belonged there.

For a fraction of a moment—

Cassiopeia saw her... the one waiting inside.

Dravenna.

Jade eyes looked at Cassiopeia with coldness that made the Marked Slave shiver... before for the briefest instant, a silent acknowledgment that carried no warmth, no explanation—only awareness, only intent settled in Dravenna’s jade eyes.

Then the door shut.

The engine came alive with a low, controlled hum.

And the car pulled away and it was gone.

Cassiopeia remained where she stood, the space they had occupied already beginning to feel emptier than it should have.

Her eyes lingered on the distance long after the vehicle disappeared.

Because something about that moment—

about that exchange—

did not sit right.

The Jade Dragoness and the youngest Ryujin Tiamat princess moving together?

Planning something, definitely.

Something deliberate enough to involve a Lesser God witch... and quiet enough that even those closest to it were being kept at the edges.