SERAPHINA’S POV
I didn’t give myself time to hesitate.
If I stopped long enough to think, I knew I’d talk myself into waiting—for my mother to come back, for answers to be handed to me instead of carved out through effort.
I’d already spent too many years waiting.
So I threw myself into training.
Me. Maya. And Corin—off-site but involved, guiding the process through scheduled calls and real-time video sessions, his calm precision cutting through even the worst connections.
The first time we set up in one of the OTS virtual projection simulation rooms, I was overwhelmed with awe.
Like the Arenas during the LST, the space unfolded around me in layers of light and geometry, the sterile white dissolving into something vast and alive.
The system, attached to an interface on my wrist, tracked my vitals, psychic output, and emotional fluctuations—every tremor laid bare.
