'Jesse Burns...'
Lucavion's gaze fixed on her the moment the name was spoken, but it was not recognition that struck him first—it was dissonance. The syllables carried no immediate weight, not at first. Just another name in a long procession of military ghosts he had long since buried beneath logic and necessity. But then—
He saw her.
And the noise in the hall vanished.
Her stride was cleaner now. Her poise sharpened with the polish of courts and hardened by the brutality of campaigns. But beneath the tailored lines of her uniform, beneath the distant clatter of noble expectation and performance, he saw it.
The same hair.
The same eyes.
That infernal, storm-scarred resilience.
'So it is her…'
And with that, the name struck home.
