Elaria: The Girl Who Waited in Starlight
I was not born. I was chosen.
That's what the Dreamwood told her.
Not in words, but in rhythm—like sap moving in trees, like breath across still waters. Elaria's first memory was not of a mother or father, but of roots. Roots wrapped around her body, cradling her in a cocoon of memory-soaked bark and silver leaves.
The Dreamwood had not created her.
It had found her.
A dying star, falling from a forgotten heaven.
It caught her soul before it could shatter and gave her a new name: Elaria.
Before the Dreamwood, there was war.
Not like the Voidwars Kairos would one day glimpse.
But a smaller, more personal conflict—one of faith versus function.
Elaria had been an Aetherion-born, part of a splintered society that tried to preserve reality by isolating its fragments—turning realms into sealed gardens where no great truths could stir. Aetherion believed in safety, in hiding from the Architect, in letting the old wounds scab over rather than bleed again.
Elaria… did not agree.
She had loved knowledge. Had studied the Wellspring archives. Had begun to hear the names of the Original Three—Orien, the Shaper. Serai, the Voice. Veyrûn, the Silent Flame.
She began to ask questions.
And in Aetherion, that was heresy.
At sixteen cycles, she was summoned before the Chorus of Silence, Aetherion's ruling oracles.
They didn't punish her.
They did worse.
They offered her a choice.
> "You wish to remember?"
"Then bear it alone."
They cut her soul from the communal stream and sealed her inside the Dreamwood—a living fragment of Aetherion's forgotten realm.
She would keep the Second Fragment.
She would never leave.
And she would remember what others were too afraid to recall.
---
The Years of Stillness
In the Dreamwood, time flowed strangely.
Centuries passed. Or minutes. It was hard to tell.
Elaria wandered among the memory-trees—each one whispering echoes of other worlds, other lives. The tree at the center—the Silverflame Tree—was her tether. Its roots were tied to the fragments. Its branches caught echoes of souls across the Sealed Realm.
Every so often, she saw them.
People who dreamed too deeply. Who brushed the veil. Who almost awakened.
She could not touch them.
Only send dreams.
And so she waited.
A girl sealed in twilight.
Humming old songs to herself so she wouldn't forget her name.
---
The Arrival of Kairos
She felt him before he stepped into the grove.
A ripple in the Dreamwood.
Not like the others.
He wasn't just awakening—he was returning.
> Orien…?
The name slipped into her mind like an old wound reopening.
She watched him approach with Lena. Watched the tree react. Watched the Fragment stir.
Part of her wanted to run.
But a larger part—a forgotten part—hoped.
Maybe he would pass the trial.
Maybe he would remember her.
Maybe she wouldn't have to carry it alone anymore.
---
The Shared Memory
When the trial pulled them into memory, Elaria had been ready for her torment.
But not for what it revealed.
She had not fled Aetherion to preserve herself.
She had fled because she saw it burning—long before it ever burned.
She saw the Seal failing. Saw the return of the Void.
And she ran, not because she was afraid, but because they would not believe her.
That was the truth she had buried.
Not cowardice.
Grief.
She hadn't failed Aetherion.
Aetherion had failed itself.
---
The Unraveling
After they retrieved the Second Fragment, the seal on her mind began to crack.
Too many echoes. Too many lives. Too many versions of herself waiting in branches, dreaming in loops.
She began to remember everything.
The faces of the Chorus of Silence.
The names of the fallen Seals.
The taste of the skies before the Architect vanished.
And the truth:
> Elaria was not just a girl who remembered.
She was part of the Seal itself.
Her body held a key rune—an ancient phrase etched into her bones.
It bound her to the Codex.
It made her essential.
But it also meant her soul was a fuse.
And the closer Kairos got to unlocking the Seals, the closer she came to burning away.
---
Her Doubt
She began to doubt him.
Kairos was kind. And brave. And strong.
But was he still Orien?
Could he carry the cost?
Or would he break the way the others had?
She wanted to believe.
But belief had never saved anyone.
---
The Choice to Stay
After the battle in Veyrûn, she had a choice.
She could leave. Disappear. Hide again.
But she didn't.
Not this time.
She stood beside Kairos and Lena. And when the Inheritor of the Void fell, and the chamber grew still, she whispered a vow beneath her breath:
> "If I burn… let it be beside them."
Not alone.
Not again.
---
Who She Truly Is
Elaria is not just a memory keeper.
She is a mirror.
She reflects the weight of truth back at the world—and bears the splinters when it turns away.
She does not seek power.
She seeks understanding.
Even now, as the Architect begins to stir, and the sky fractures, and the last Seal trembles—
She watches.
And waits.
Not because she fears the end.
But because she still believes:
> Even sealed things can bloom again.