"My aura exploded," Erza said, and her voice was no longer trembling. It was flat, empty, the voice of someone who had crossed a threshold and left something important behind on the other side.
"Something was awakening within me, something ancient, something terrible, something that had been sleeping in my blood since the day I was born, waiting for the moment when grief would finally crack the shell I had built around it.
The whole kingdom felt it. Not just the great hall, not just the capital, but every corner of Atlantis, from the frozen northern wastes to the southern shores where the ice never melts. Every dragon, every elf, every creature that drew breath within the borders of my mother's kingdom felt the same presence of authority pressing down on them, and they knew, without being told, without understanding how, that something had changed forever."
She paused, her violet eyes distant, lost in a memory that had been carved into her soul centuries ago.
