He was never meant to follow her.
So he because the path beneath her feet.
When Sol fell, he did not fall like a boy.
He fell like a system of stars collapsing into something brighter.
No scream. No echo.
Only stillness and then light, blinding and terrible in its beauty.
Elariax dropped to her knees.
But the magic wouldn't let her grieve.
It surged around her, rewriting the space where he'd stood.
Where his body had been ink bloomed.
Black, glimmering with stardust, it spread in elegant threads across the air, her robes, the ground beneath her.
"What is this" Kairon whispered.
"He chose to be the spell," Eren said hoarsely. "He's not gone. He's…written in."
All around them, the ancient runes were forming.
But they weren't static.
They were moving. Breathing.
Thinking.
Sol's magic wasn't just amplifying her spell.
It was rebuilding it.
"He changed the structure," Elariax whispered.
"How?" Eren stepped beside her, eyes wet, jaw set.
"He didn't have time."
"He didn't need time," Kairon murmured from behind.
"He had intention."
The spell now no longer unnamed rose into the sky.
A web of threadlike constellations, burning with Sol's soul at its core.
And in that moment
Elariax didn't look like a girl.
She looked like a sovereign made of loss and glory.
She stood.
Raised her hand.
And drew the first mark of her reign across the sky:
𓂀 — the symbol of a vow written in sacrifice.
The moment she did, thunder cracked without clouds.
And the world shifted.
Literally.
Across the continent, empires stuttered.
Seers dropped to their knees.
The Old Magic stirred in its grave.
And every spellcaster felt it
A new name had been written into the Laws of Power.
Elariax. Daughter of Threads. Queen of the Unnamed.
"He's still here," she whispered.
Her voice was trembling, but steady.
Because she knew.
Every time she cast, he would answer.
Sol was no longer a boy of the Academy.
He was now the language of her magic.
And as the ink curled around her fingertips like devotion Elariax raised her head.
The stars bowed back.