Elaris's smile didn't fade.
If anything, it deepened.
But the shimmer in her eyes had shifted—less velvet now, more edge. The kind of smile one offered before drawing the veil over a guillotine.
"My," she said, almost thoughtfully, "so principled. So... poetic."
She leaned forward just slightly, her voice dropping to a whisper that still carried with perfect clarity between them.
"I do hope that same conviction holds," she said, "when the Academy corridors begin to narrow. When your schedule fills with errors that no one recalls assigning. When your requests go unanswered. When the dueling invitations start coming… from names you were never meant to cross."
A pause. Just long enough to let the implications settle like frost along the skin.
She tilted her head, almost wistfully.
"It's remarkable," she mused, "how swiftly one's school life can become… inconvenient."
Valeria didn't flinch.
Didn't blink.
Only answered, her voice soft, level, and iron-clad:
