Seraphina's moments came in the quiet hours before dawn.
She joined me for early training again, her ancient techniques blending with my illusions in increasingly seamless ways. Afterward, we sat together watching the sunrise paint the mountains.
"I keep expecting to wake up back in the prison," she confessed one morning, voice barely above a whisper. "Three centuries of the same walls, the same duty. Now I wake up and there are voices. Warmth. People who see me as more than a tool."
I took her hand. "You were never just a tool. Even then. You survived where others would have broken. That strength is yours. Now you get to choose what to do with it."
She leaned against me, the contact still tentative but growing more natural each day. "I choose this. All of it. Even if it terrifies me."
---
Elizabeth remained the steady heart of our group.
