Amelia's heartbeat stuttered.
The courtyard around her faded.The cold night air thinned.For a single breath, she wasn't standing on solid ground anymore.
She was somewhere else.
Somewhere impossible.
A realm of broken stars and dark fire…A battlefield carved into the sky…A shadowed throne with chains stretching into eternity.
And at the foot of that throne—
A figure knelt.
Tall. Armored in cracked celestial gold.A monstrous shadow coiled behind him like a living night.
His head lifted.
His eyes—red, ancient, hungry—locked onto her.
Not Amelia.
Her.
Arhelia.
"Do you remember now?" the figure whispered.
The vision shattered.
Amelia gasped, collapsing to her knees.
Kael caught her before she hit the ground.His arms were strong but shaking.
"Amelia! Hey—stay with me." His voice was raw with fear he didn't bother to hide.
The Devourer's shadow-hand thrashed violently inside the golden rings, screeching as if her brief vision burned it.
Master Xuan's eyes widened.
"You saw something," he said quietly.
Amelia swallowed hard.
"I… think I saw a memory."She shook her head. "But it wasn't mine. It felt—older. Like it belonged to someone I used to be."
The celestials exchanged a single, grim look.
The lead celestial spoke first.
"Your true self is trying to surface."
Kael stiffened.
"No." He reached out, gripping Amelia's shoulders, voice trembling with something dangerously close to desperation."She is Amelia. Not anyone else."
The Devourer laughed again—ragged, shrill, delighted.
"Poor guardian… clinging to a name she borrowed…"
The shadow claws strained harder, cracking the outer ring of Master Xuan's seal.
"Let her remember," it crooned."She was mine first."
Something inside Amelia snapped.
Not in fear.
In anger.
She stood—barely steady, but burning.
"I don't belong to you."
The Devourer froze.
Its skeletal shadow-hand hovered—uncertain, as if her declaration struck something deeper than any seal.
Amelia stepped closer to the glowing rings.
Every celestial tensed.
Kael grabbed her wrist."Amelia—don't go near that thing."
But she didn't stop.
She pointed directly at the shadow.
"You don't get to tell me who I was. Or what I am."
The Devourer's eleven unseen eyes narrowed.
And then—
It whispered something so faint, even the celestials flinched.
A name.
Not Amelia.Not Arhelia.
A third name.
A forbidden one.
A name that made the sigils around the courtyard flicker.
A name that cracked the Devourer's own chains deep beneath the earth.
Amelia's breath hitched.
Because the moment she heard it—
Her heart reacted.
Her power reacted.
The world reacted.
"No…" Master Xuan whispered."Not that name. She isn't ready to remember that."
The Devourer hissed triumphantly.
"She is closer than you think."
The ground trembled violently, the city rumbling as if waking from a nightmare.
Kael pulled Amelia into his arms again, voice low, fierce:
"Whatever name it said—it doesn't change who you are now."
But Amelia couldn't stop shaking.
Because the name the Devourer whispered…
felt like it fit.
Like it had always been hers.
Hidden.
Erased.
Waiting.
And now that it had been spoken—
something sealed inside her had begun to unlock.