Page 67 of She Who Devours the Stars

A distortion hit the grav field. Only a hair, but I caught it—a ripple, then a snap as the Hall’s doors swung open, no preamble, no mythic fanfare, just the raw hush of a vacuum pulling at your lungs.

For a second, the air went static. Every eye locked forward.

Fern Trivane walked in like she’d just come from a mugging, and the mugger had lost. She was taller than I expected, maybean inch over average, but all myth and angle, impossible to look away from. The suit she wore was illegal in at least three systems—midnight blue, overlays in white that shimmered in time with her pulse, every line designed for either seduction or violence, or both. Her face was sharp: cheekbones you could measure conductivity with, mouth curved in a half-smirk that said she’d already started counting the exits.

She walked with a gait I’d only ever seen in two places: on predators, and on the people who’d survived them.

Behind her trailed an Accord attaché—female, platinum hair, features so symmetric I almost missed the tells. She didn’t move like a handler, more like a bodyguard who’d just been told to stand down. She scanned the room once, then parked herself at the edge, hands clasped behind her back, every muscle at parade rest.

The real drama, though, was in the way Fern moved. Not a glide, not a stalk, just a perfect rejection of every tradition the room was built on. The crowd parted for her, instinctive, like they’d all agreed not to touch a live wire. Even the front-row royalty leaned back, eyes wide, as Fern passed.

It took me a second to realize my own heart had spiked.

The mythlights tracked her, the overlays in her suit refracting the spectrum until it bled out the banners and even the glass itself. I’d spent two years at this Academy, watched every type of prodigy and psycho walk these floors, but nothing had ever bent the room like this.

For a split second, I thought the attaché had to be the Nullarch. The cut, the command in her eyes. She looked like someone who could burn down a city and then file the paperwork, no hesitation. But when Fern stepped into the mythlight, the effect was immediate—a stutter in the drones, two nearby kids nearlyflinched, and the faculty froze. Even Ipsum, locked in his panic loop, forgot how to breathe.

I wasn’t immune. I made a mental note to figure out why later, but for now, I just watched.

A hiss in my ear: the Vellari twins, leaning in close, voices syrupy with malice. Vessa went first: “Careful, darling. Look too long and she might notice you exist.” Then Vex, voice even lower, “Or maybe she’ll eat you alive, and you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

I didn’t bother answering. I just kept my eyes on Fern, watched as she prowled the front of the room, then pivoted on a heel so sharp it could’ve cut the floor. She stood at the center, waiting.

The crowd exhaled as one, but no one dared speak.

The headmistress finally arrived—she must’ve been waiting for the signal. She strode in from a side door, robes flaring, her own resonance already tuned to war. She stopped, met Fern’s gaze, and for a second, nothing else moved. The two of them stood there, myth against myth, the entire Academy caught in the gravity between.

Then the headmistress nodded. “Welcome to Eventide Aethenaeum,” she intoned, and the words broke the spell.

Applause. Half-hearted, unsure, but enough to make the twins groan in boredom. I clapped, slow, late, then tucked my arms back into themselves.

I glanced once more at Fern, watched her lips twitch into a real smile—a dangerous one—and felt the floor shift under my feet.

I should have looked away. I knew the risk.

But I didn’t.

And I knew, in that moment, I wouldn’t get free of it, ever.

Thread Modulation: Dyris Vaelith

Axis Alignment: Office of the Headmistress, Eventide

The Headmistress’s office had the aesthetic of a high-security jewelry heist staged inside a migraine. It was all curves—chrome, burnished mythstone, iridescent glass—and just enough naked circuitry to remind you the room could be repurposed as a panic bunker if negotiations got ugly. I perched on a chair that cost more than my first three apartments combined, its design so deliberately uncomfortable I had to admire the psychological warfare behind it. You never forgot whose world you’d stepped into.

Headmistress Ania didn’t waste time with pleasantries. She stalked the perimeter of her desk like a prowling bird of prey, streaming multiple data feeds into her peripheral as she spoke. “I need you to explain to me,” she said, “in words my last two techs could not render into a diagram, how exactly your mythprint walked off a mythship, walked onto a major world, and in the span of fourteen hours produced a stable White Hole resonance event while simultaneously establishing an offshoot cargo cult and torpedoing three planetary economy models.”

I blinked. Not to show confusion, but to clear the afterimage of her shoes—bladed, mirrored, lethal in a way that wasn’t just decorative. “It was only tacos,” I offered.

Ania stabbed a finger at me. “It was not ‘only tacos.’ Dyris, I cannot stress this enough: She formed a stable divine resonance with a concept that physics still considers theoretical, and used it to make street food.”

I let my gaze wander to the environmental controls, which had ramped the air to a shade too cold, deliberate enough to trigger primal discomfort. “She was hungry. It seemed…inevitable.”

“Don’t deadpan me.” Ania leaned forward, hands flat on the desktop. “Do you know how long it’s been since someone formed a new astral bond before entering formal containment? Never. The answer is never. And that includes the recursions of myths other than Lioren.” She pinched her brow, then toggled a mute on three live comms just so she could focus all her scorn on me. “There are mathematicians on my payroll who just resigned rather than process the updates.”

I waited for her to finish. Silence was power, if you could stand it.

“She’s not Lioren,” I said.