Page 64 of She Who Devours the Stars

Next: the belt. She cinched it at the waist so expertly that I felt every vertebra click into alignment. “Hold still,” she ordered, threading the clasp through with unconscious violence, her hands more confident than any doctor or assassin I’d ever met. I felt a pop of pressure at my ribs and gasped. Velline only smiled, a razor-thin line of satisfaction, and patted the buckle once, like burping a baby.

“Shoes.” She said it like a summons and tossed a pair at my feet without looking: black, high-top, mythtech soles iridescent with weird tech that had never been legal anywhere I’d lived. They stuck to the floor in a way that made you doubt your own mass. The moment I kicked them on, they gripped my heels, fusing with the suit and then pulsing, just once, like they were taking my measure.

I gained two centimeters of height and reached a kind of equilibrium I’d never had before; every muscle felt both lighter and ready for mutiny.

Velline stepped back to take inventory. She cocked her head, one eyebrow arched high enough that it nearly merged with her hairline, a look she reserved for moments when she wanted you to know she’d played chess against herself and won in both directions.

She paced around me once. Twice. Her face was unreadable except for a glint in her eye that told me something significant was happening here, something I probably wouldn’t appreciate until much later.

“Turn,” she commanded.

I rotated awkwardly, already missing the protective slouch of my old clothes but also addicted to the new suit’s aggression. My reflection stared back from three mirrored panels: one head-on,two slightly behind each shoulder like future versions of myself judging every choice I was about to make.

I looked… not pretty, that had never been on the menu, but dangerous in a way that might trick people into thinking I was untouchable if they didn’t know better. The suit gave me extra inches; beneath it, my frame looked deliberate rather than accidental, like every flaw had been designed for function or intimidation or both.

My hair, which Velline had sculpted into an asymmetrical crown of spikes softened by loose curls, caught the mirror’s light and refracted it back over both cheeks, tinting them with undertones of amethyst and ultraviolet rage.

The effect: messy apocalypse princess meets outlaw tech priestess meets “I will eat your soul for lunch if you get crumbs on this upholstery.” If that didn’t scream “I’m the fucking Nullarch”, then I’d clearly misunderstood the assignment. (After all, I still didn’t actually know what a Nullarch was.)

A slow grin split across my face against my will.

But then, it hit me all at once, the horror behind the camouflage: What if this wasn’t armor? What if everyone could see right through it? The closer I got to gorgeous or powerful or even presentable, the more certain I became that someone would rip it away mid-sentence and expose me for what I actually was: panic on legs, fraud powered by stolen mythic current.

I flexed my fingers reflexively, their new polish catching moonlight from somewhere even in this windowless den, and said: “What if I can’t live up to this?”

It came out too honest; the question landed heavily between us.

Velline’s mouth softened at the edges. She didn’t move immediately; she let silence do its job first, filling up all available space so there’d be room for what mattered next.

Then she crossed behind me in two strides and set her hands on my shoulders, palms warm and solid through all the synthetic bravado of the suit. Her touch was grounding, a counterpoint to everything else staged for performance in this room.

She squeezed just enough to be sure I was listening. Then, she leaned forward so our eyes met in the mirror’s center panel, me staring back with fear disguised as defiance; her looking so proud it almost hurt.

“Darling,” she said quietly but with an intensity that made it impossible not to believe her, even when you knew better, “you already did.”

I swallowed, my throat thick.

She met my eyes in the mirror, then smirked. “Also, if anyone tries to dress-code you, just ask if their suit can double as a trauma patch. This will heal you if someone tries to bleed you on the way in. House Vaelith might be old, but I’m a Meldin.”

I laughed. A real one, loud and ugly and full of all the things I’d been too scared to say. It bounced off the walls and made the smart fabric in my suit ripple, like the sound could reach right into my bones and fix the fractures.

I wanted to say thank you, but my mouth couldn’t find the shape. So instead, I just stood there, letting the silence stretch, letting myself believe that maybe I was inevitable, for at least one hour.

Velline knelt to tie my shoes because she never believed in false pride. Then she looked up, winked, and said, “Go break the world, Fern. But do it beautifully.”

I walked out, the suit adjusting with every step, the lights behind me strobing in applause.

For the first time in forever, I wanted to be seen.

And, gods help the world, I was ready.

Chapter 9: Arrival At the Academy

Thread Modulation: Fern Meldin

Axis Alignment: Aboard Vireleth the Closure

The command lounge on Vireleth had a view calibrated for maximum drama: the entire dorsal hull stretched out like a glass-bottomed bridge over Eventide’s upper atmosphere, the planet’s night side smeared below in electric blue. I sprawled across the contoured gel sofa, bare feet on the polished rail, sipping fizzy melon-mint through a bendy straw I’d conjured out of mythic spite. The ship had tuned the glass for meme-projection, so HoloNet feeds rippled across the view in real time: cultists doing taco ASMR, the latest Accord “containment update,” and, trending at #1, a gif of my face looped to chew the sun.