The offer sits between us, genuine and without pressure.
“Thank you,” I say, and mean it.
My gaze drops to her collarbone, where a faint blue glow pulses beneath the surface of her skin. A sigil. Not the Sun’s blazing circle or the Moon’s crescent, but a single droplet of water, luminescent and alive, the same one I noticed in the first trial when she was using water magic.
“Lady Nerida,” I say quietly. “Your sigil. I’ve never seen anyone with one … except my mother and me.”
She touches the glowing droplet gently, as if reminding herself it exists.
“Neptune remembers what the rest of the system forgets. Water keeps its history. Some of us are born from very old currents.”
“Does it help you see the future?”
“It helps me sense where truths are drifting. That’s enough.”
She steps out of the pool and offers a hand to help me rise. I take it. Her grip is steady, pulling me up and out of the water that still clings to my clothes.
“You’re almost ready to lead. Go to Saturn next. Lord Evander will show you how to shape what you saw.”
She releases my hand.
“And Lady Cyra,” she adds. “You’re not alone in your rarity. Don’t hide it, least of all from yourself.”
She turns away, moving to the far side of the room where a robe the colour of deep ocean water hangs waiting. She wraps herself in itwithout looking back, her sea-green hair dripping steady streams of water onto the tiles.
I stand at the edge of the warm pool for another moment, water dripping from my clothes, my heart still racing from the visions. The chamber feels different now. Less like a meditation space and more like a place where truths are dragged to the surface whether you want them or not.
The bioluminescent patterns beneath the water pulse in slow rhythm, indifferent to everything that just happened.
Ren is waiting outside, her expression carefully neutral, though I catch the flicker of concern in her eyes when she sees me dripping and shaken.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
Two down. One to go.
Ren escorts me to Lord Evander’s quarters in the Saturn residential wing. The corridors here are lined with dark grey stone veined with silver, lit by panels that emit cool white light at mathematically precise intervals. Everything here is ordered and deliberate. Small archival alcoves punctuate the walls, each one holding a mounted datapad displaying real-time information: atmospheric readings, arena structural integrity reports, resource allocation charts.
Saturn scholars pass us in the corridor, moving with quiet purpose. They wear simple dark purple robes marked only by thin silver bands at the collar indicating their specializations. No one speaks. A young archivist carrying a stack of bound reports nods to us but doesn’t break stride. Another scholar sits in one of the alcoves, absorbed in a datapad, a cup of what looks like black tea cooling beside her elbow.
The wing reminds me of Mars in a way – both built for efficiency rather than comfort. But where Mars channels everything toward defence and military readiness, Saturn’s design serves pure intellect.
Lord Evander opens the door before Ren can announce me. He’s changed out of his formal robes into simpler black clothing – a high-collared tunic and fitted trousers that look well-worn but impeccably maintained. His chestnut and grey-streaked hair is still perfectly neat, swept back from his angular face, his glasses perched at the tip of his nose.
“I have been expecting you, Lady Cyra,” he says. “Come in.”
His quarters match the hallway, minimal and ordered. The walls are lined floor-to-ceiling with built-in shelves, and unlike the sparse functionality everywhere else, these shelves arefull. Books. Hundreds ofthem, arranged by size and subject but clearly read, their spines creased and worn. Technical manuals sit beside philosophy texts. Historical accounts stack next to mathematical treatises. In one corner, I spot what looks like fiction – actual novels, their covers faded from handling.
A desk holds a single datapad displaying architectural schematics, but beside it sits a half-empty cup of tea, long cold, and a small plate with untouched bread. The bed is made without a single wrinkle, indigo linens pulled taut, but a book lies open on the pillow – he was reading before I arrived.
The viewport shows the arena’s interior, but unlike Zevran’s display of Mars in real-time, Lord Evander’s shows a grid overlay measuring distances and angles, breaking the structure down into comprehensible data.
He gestures to a chair near the viewport with a thin blanket draped over one arm, as if he sometimes needs warmth the regulation temperature doesn’t provide.
“Tea?” he offers, moving to a small preparation station. “I hope you like Titan black tea, it is Saturn’s primary export aside from scholarly services. We grow it in underground hydroponic farms.” He doesn’t wait for my answer, already preparing a second cup with the same methodical precision he applies to everything else. “The Cardinals commission our research. The other Houses send their brightest scholars to our academies. Mostly we are left alone, which suits us.”
He hands me the cup – plain ceramic, warm to the touch. The tea is bitter, sharp, meant to keep scholars alert during long research sessions.
