On the morning of the investigation, Saint Astra City lay drowned beneath a pall of grey rain. The cobblestone streets of the Old Harbor District gleamed like polished bone, while the Victorian warehouses on either side stood in mute procession, their windows blind as sightless eyes.
Eloise halted before the iron gates of No. 13 Blackbrick Alley and lifted her gaze toward the spired silhouette of the Museum of World Wonders. It was larger than she had imagined—five stories of Gothic ambition, its flying buttresses unfurled like stone wings. Gargoyles upon the roof wept streams of black liquid, whether rainwater or something more sinister she could not tell.
She wore the Academy's protective coat: dark grey, waterproof, threaded with soul-energy sensors and emergency communicators. In her pack lay the disassembled components of her mechanical arm-guard, disguised as survey instruments. Her pocket watch rested close to her heart; she could feel the twin gemstones pulsing within.
Beside her, Zoe studied a tablet glowing with thermal schematics."Seventeen heat signatures inside. But the one on sublevel two… minus fifteen degrees, surrounded by a ring of intense heat."
"Cryogenic containment," Eloise murmured. "Or magical preservation."
The other two students arrived.Redmond Carter—her red hair tucked beneath a hood, amber eyes narrowing as she activated her spirit-sight.Leon Walker—tall, silent, his earring replaced with a silver sigil charm, checking a modified camera rig fitted with arcane filters.
Professor Gianna Archer stepped down from the command vehicle, carrying a silver case."Final briefing," she said. "Green routes are safe. Yellow are restricted. Red are forbidden. Data collection only—soul density, spectral activity, environmental readings. Report every twenty minutes. Withdraw after three hours, regardless of progress."
She distributed small metal devices."Emergency beacons. Activate only in mortal danger."
Eloise turned one over in her palm. Tiny letters were engraved beneath:
Provided by the Morrell Foundation.
Her heart skipped.
"Professor," she asked evenly, "the sponsor of these devices…?"
"The Morrell Cultural Preservation Society," Archer replied, avoiding her gaze. "They possess partial original blueprints."
Leon frowned. "Sebastian Morrell is dead."
"His descendants manage the society now," Archer said. "Prepare to enter."
The iron gates opened with an electronic sigh.
Inside, dust and damp air rushed out to greet them. Flashlight beams cut through darkness and revealed murals of stars and mythical beasts—every face gouged away, leaving hollow sockets.
"Welcome to the House of Curiosities," Redmond whispered. "My grandfather saw this place when it was open. Children paid a penny to see wonders. Then some children never came back."
Eloise activated her soul monitor. The reading surged wildly.
"This building is not just haunted," she said. "It is a collector. The structure itself absorbs soul-energy."
Leon's camera hummed."The interior geometry is wrong. The hall should be thirty meters long. It's forty-two."
"Folded space," Eloise said. "Black-architect design."
Her pocket watch trembled. The silver gem pulsed urgently.
"Viretta feels it," she whispered. "Her core is below."
They followed the green route downward into freezing air.
Behind an oak door marked Treasures of Earth, Fragments of Starlight, they found a chamber the size of a stadium.
Hundreds of glass cases stood in ranks.
Not minerals.
Crystals.
Each crystal glowed faintly—and inside each one writhed a fragment of soul: human memories, animal instincts, shards of nature spirits trapped like insects in amber.
"Soul-crystals," Redmond breathed. "Forged from living beings."
"They're still alive," Eloise said. "Alive—and suffering."
Her watch convulsed.
At the far end stood twelve velvet pedestals. Each held a fragment of the same silver light.
A label read:
Astral Elf — Starlight Core FragmentCollected: April 17, 1823Status: Unstable. Continuous decay.
"Viretta," Eloise whispered. "Scattered… so she cannot reform."
Then the room ignited.
All crystals blazed at once, weaving a lattice of light across the air.
A mechanical voice spoke:
"Unauthorized entities detected. Initiating defense protocol."
The glass cases opened. Crystals rose, shrieking.
"Fall back!" Eloise shouted.
But the doors sealed into luminous walls.
Leon fired sonic pulses. Redmond called out resonance frequencies. Zoe searched for exits. Eloise deployed her mechanical arm-guard, soul-shield flaring.
The floor descended.
Not a trapdoor—the entire chamber sank like an elevator into the abyss.
They arrived in a circular hall beneath the foundations of the city. Above them was not sky but a sea of black matter pressing against a glass dome.
At the center stood a colossal apparatus of brass and crystal: the full starlight array.
And within it—Viretta's true core, radiant and whole, yet strangled by black tendrils.
Upon a throne of machinery sat a corpse in Victorian black. Ruby cane in hand. Crystal eyes glowing.
Sebastian Morrell.
"Welcome," his voice filled the chamber. "Each crystal is my memory. My sight. My mind."
"You used us as fuel," Eloise said.
"My masterpiece requires consciousness," Morrell replied. "Four spirit-seers will refine the core into a vessel worthy of me."
"Viretta's core?" Eloise hissed.
"Not occupy. Fuse. I shall be reborn—human and elf, immortal collector, eternal observer."
The ritual accelerated. Soul-energy tore from them toward the array.
Redmond and Leon collapsed. Zoe screamed.
"You remember her true name," Eloise gasped.
Morrell smiled."Virlithe Starlight-Wing. Sold to me by her sister for the Court's 'purification.'"
The pocket watch exploded in light.
Ruby and silver fused.
From the blaze emerged a figure of living starlight—golden hair, luminous wings, eyes of swirling nebulae.
"Sebastian Morrell," she said, voice like a choir of bells, "three hundred years of bondage ends now."
Fragments flew to her, reassembling her being.
"You misunderstood my nature," Viretta declared. "I am not energy. I am the embodiment of hope, of return, of home."
She annihilated Morrell's corpse in starfire.
Yet the ritual continued. A shadow-rift tore open above.
"Time-anchor!" Viretta cried. "Stabilize the flow!"
Eloise raised the fused gem and felt time become a river in flood. She built a dam with her will.
"Zoe—destroy the core!"
With Viretta's guidance, the star-forge was shut down.
Then the shadows moved again.
A shape formed: a woman in a Victorian maid's dress, throat slit, face blank.
Clara.
"No…" Viretta whispered. "He bound her with control runes."
The shadow attacked.
Only a true name could free her.
Eloise remembered rain on glass. Circles drawn in silence. A pattern of sorrow.
She spoke—not in sound, but in soul:
Silent rain upon the window,wound that never heals,guardian of inner light.
Clara froze. Awareness returned.
She mouthed: I'm sorry.
Then she threw herself into the star-forge.
Light collapsed inward. The rift closed.
Silence fell.
Clara was gone.
"She is free," Viretta said softly.
The core remained—changed, no longer purely elven.
"I cannot reclaim it," Viretta said. "It is something new. You must seal it."
Eloise absorbed it into the fused gem. A miniature galaxy spun within.
They escaped at dawn.
In the empty command vehicle lay a note:
You did well. Do not return to the Academy.The Faerie Court knows Viretta has awakened.Beware the eyes in the sky.— G.A.
Leon spat. "Traitor."
"Or pawn," Eloise said. "Either way, we are hunted now."
She looked to the brightening clouds.
Something flew between them—vast, winged, luminous.
The eyes of the Elf Court.
They had already arrived.