While Dex was submerged in his complex internal struggle-weighing the fate of the entire world on one side of the scale and the enigmatic call of his Core on the other-magical physics resolved the matter on his behalf. There was no longer any need for his decision to break the seal or leave it. The environment itself was attending to that.
Without warning, the amber sarcophagus emitted a sharp and startling sound-precisely the sound of a thick sheet of lake ice shattering under the blow of an enormous hammer.
CRAAACK.
The echo reverberated through the cavern. Dex stepped back two paces, dropping into a combat defensive stance, his Core pumping Mana into his limbs in readiness for the worst.
The sudden and violent physical change had done its work. The cocoon had rested for thousands of years at the sunken floor under hydrostatic pressure estimated at millions of tonnes and a stable temperature exceeding thousands of degrees. By extracting the sarcophagus from that stable environment and exposing it to the comparatively cool air of the upper cavern and to ordinary atmospheric pressure, Dex had catastrophically disrupted the delicate structural equilibrium of the Stellar Amber that had preserved the girl for a thousand years. The temporal prison that had withstood the magic of gods was now collapsing under the simple laws of thermodynamics.
A long, thin but deep fissure began to appear on the sarcophagus's smooth surface, extending from its base to its crown. Then another crack followed, and a third, forming a spider-web network of glittering fractures.
And with agonising slowness-a slowness that set every nerve on edge-the front face of the sarcophagus began to separate and swing open. It did not fall. It shifted aside like the gate of an ancient pharaonic tomb. With the opening came a long, deep, majestic sound-like a cosmic exhalation held captive for untold ages. Ancient winds laden with the scent of dead stars and the dust of forgotten eons erupted outward and struck Dex's face, sending his crimson hair flying back behind him.
The amber's preservative substance dissolved the instant it met the air, converting immediately to radiant luminous dust-particles of shimmering silver light that began to dance in the air around the open sarcophagus like magical fireflies. And in the midst of this mythical scene, the girl drew her first breath of clean air in centuries. Her chest rose with extreme slowness, then fell.
Then... she opened her eyes.
Dex drew an audible, involuntary breath and retreated one more step. He had faced death. He had faced hideous beasts. But what he was looking at now was terrifying in an entirely different way.
Her eyes were not blue like a clear sky. Not green like the forests of the elves. Not even gold like the eyes of dragons. They were silver. Silver like her hair-but the silver of liquid metal, cold and molten. They carried no distinct pupil or iris as humans do. They were two pools of blazing silver light, radiating a luminescence that pierced the soul and made any who looked into them feel they were standing naked before a cosmic tribunal.
She sat up with agonising slowness inside the sarcophagus, as though her body were relearning how to respond to the laws of gravity. With her movement, the extraordinarily long and dense strands of her silver hair slid across her shoulders and down her back, cascading to cover wide expanses of her form with an effortless and majestic elegance-forming a natural mantle that concealed more than it revealed and draped her in an aura of sacred purity that no gaze of desire would dare violate.
She raised her two pale, delicate hands slowly before her face. She studied them with strange absorption, moving her fingers one by one, as though seeing them for the first time-or as though surprised by her own material existence. Then she raised her head slowly and swept her gaze around the shattered volcanic cavern, contemplating the black rocks, the quiescent magma lake, and the scattered blue crystals.
And at last... her movement stopped. She directed her face forward and lifted her gaze-and her two blazing silver eyes met Dex's eyes, alight with their blue and gold fire.
In that moment when their gazes met, time itself stopped inside the cavern.
Dex braced for any attack. He tightened his muscles and activated the Phoenix aura at its full capacity. He expected to hear an ancient incantation that would rupture his eardrums, or to see an explosion of Time Mana that would erase him from existence, or an absolute glacial wave that would freeze his blood within his veins. He was prepared to fight to the death against a princess of the Celestials.
But he waited... and nothing came.
When Dex looked deep into those two pools of silver, he did not find what he had expected. He did not find the blind hatred of invaders. He did not find the divine arrogance that viewed humans as insects. He did not find even the ancient knowledge and wisdom that accumulates across thousands of years.
What he found in her eyes was nothing but... emptiness.
A vast, pure, and aching emptiness. Not the gaze of a killer readied to strike-but the gaze of a small child who had just awoken in a strange and frightening world. The gaze of a lost soul that had come unmoored from its anchor and was searching in desperation for any point of reference in this existence. There was not a single particle of hostility in her loose, relaxed posture. Only absolute confusion and silent bewilderment.
She blinked those beautiful silver eyes slowly and tilted her head a little to the side in a childlike, innocent motion, studying Dex as though he were a complex puzzle. Her full, pale lips trembled gently, parting slightly as though she were attempting to speak-trying to form some word-but no sound emerged. As though in her slumber of a thousand years, she had forgotten even how words are shaped, or how the vocal cords are used.
She continued to look at him-the blue fire reflecting in her silver eyes-in a silence that carried more secrets than the world had the capacity to contain. And so the newly born Burning King stood face to face with the calamity of the heavens, her memory entirely gone.