Private Chrysalis

[Darth Virelia]

"A war on the self."

Tags - Reina Daival


- TW: Dark Themes -


The tank hummed with low, viscous resonance. The kind of sound that settled into the bones and whispered stay.

Deep beneath the surface jungles of Rakata Prime—where the canopy above choked out the stars and the ruins of the Infinite Empire bled power into the roots of the world—Darth Virelia stood alone with her prize.

The chamber was circular, obsidian-walled, smooth like a sanctum carved from volcanic glass. Bioluminescent flora—genetically tailored to Virelia's aesthetic—glowed in delicate spirals up the walls, casting the entire room in shades of violet, rose, and violent gold. The only illumination beyond them came from the tank itself: a cylindrical structure of dark transparisteel shot through with thin veins of circuitry and ritual etching. Alchemical seals pulsed in concentric rings across its surface.

And floating in its heart, suspended by a gel-like medium of soft green and gold, was Reina.

She was not bound. Not physically. No straps. No cuffs. Her arms drifted at her sides like she were dreaming underwater. Her head tilted gently downward, eyes closed, hair fanning out in a slow, aimless ballet. The nutrient-saturated medium clothed her better than any armor—it seeped into every pore, numbing, preserving, preparing. A chrysalis in the making.

She hadn't spoken since they arrived.

Virelia didn't mind.

The Sith Lord stood barefoot on the polished stone floor, arms loose at her sides, her armor peeled away in layers until only her long black underrobe clung to her lithe frame, parted slightly down the middle where her skin shimmered faintly with the residue of Force-charged incense. Her hair was unbound, cascading down like blonde ink. The air around her was warm, heavy with floral scent, and laced with a subtle electrostatic thrum that made every breath feel… intimate.

She watched Reina float in silence. Studying. Savoring.

This was no longer about breaking her.

That had already happened.

This was about shaping. About guiding the pieces into something sublime. Something that could bloom under careful hands.

"You always did look better in stillness," Virelia said softly, more to herself than to the girl in the tank. "Not the brittle kind—no. That frantic, jagged little edge of yours was always so exhausting to watch. But this…"

Her hand drifted along the outer glass, fingers trailing as if to trace the curve of Reina's cheek without truly touching. The connection was all imagined. All manufactured. And yet—utterly real in her mind.

"This is the silence you never gave yourself."

She paced slowly, each step unhurried, predatory in its grace, her violet eyes never leaving the form suspended in fluid. The alchemical sigils responded to her presence—low pulses of purple energy crawling across the glass in slow syncopation with Reina's faint heartbeat.

"You would have died for them, you know. For the people who forgot you. For the ones who feared you. Even for the ones who broke you." She exhaled with a wistful sigh. "You wanted to be a Jedi. Wanted it like a child wants praise. But you were always too honest to fit in their little temple games."

The lights dimmed slightly. Not from power loss—there was no such thing here—but as a cue, a rhythm Virelia herself had set to underscore her rituals. It made her voice seem closer. Lower. Wrapped in velvet.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Reina. Not in the way you understand. No torture. No scars. I don't need to twist you. I'm going to teach you what it means to feel again."

She leaned in, lips brushing the outer tank, leaving behind the faintest bloom of condensation.

 

[Reina Daival]

Tags: Darth Virelia

Reina wasn't here. Not mentally at least. She hadn't been here for a while. Not since her attempt to take her life into her own hands had failed. She might have failed at taking herself out physically, but emotionally and mentally, the redhead was just broken. The entire journey to where Serina had taken her had been quiet on Reina's end. Not taking in any noise, nor saying anything herself. She had nothing to say. Nothing to believe in any more. Reina didn't have any words to hide behind. No shield to hide behind. She had prepared to sacrifice herself and that sacrifice had been ripped away from her. Her defense. Her protection, It had shattered in a dozen different fragments.

And so this is where she laid, adrift in some kind of nutritional soup, floating in a world of her own...Except it was more like a nightmare. She couldn't decide which world she wanted to be in. In one world, she was adrift on the ship she had been raised on. Working hard with the crew that had been her family for so long. There wasn't a smile on her face, but she felt good. Felt happy. It was what had come naturally to Reina. It was what she was used to for so long, and in one part of her mind, it's where everything started to go so wrong. But it was wrong. There was something missing. Who she was. On the ship, she was just a face. No-one.

But then came the second world she could have been living in. The one where she was a Jedi. Surrounded by her friends. The people who cared for her. Everest. Colette. Klar. Valery. To name just a handful of people. In this imaginary world, Reina got to be the shining beacon she had always wanted to be. Lightsaber held aloft and the smiling faces. But this was also wrong. Reina was not a shining light in the life of anyone. She was no hero. No jedi. She had been told enough times that she couldn't be a real Jedi because she couldn't put her frustrations behind her. Her resentments. She couldn't forgive. And so this world was wrong.

So came the third and final world in her mind. The most simplest of them. The most normal of them. Because in this world, Reina...or should we say, Raini, was a normal girl. No experiences out at sea. No Force training. No. Instead she was just a student. Studying, with the aid of her family. Alexis, the ever-caring elder sister constantly hovering over Raini to make sure she wasn't struggling. It had everything she could have wanted. She felt happy. Content. She was who she was meant to be. But...there was one thing that proved how wrong it was. Whilst she could see Alexis clear as day, her parents had no face. She didn't know what they looked like. Who they were. And none of the worlds fit.

Nothing fit. Reina didn't fit into any of those worlds. Maybe, maybe if she had a more hopeful mindset, if she was more optimistic, she could have found a way to fit into all of them...but in this moment? Reina was dead to the living world. She was barely responsive to anything. She was just...in her own mind.​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"A war on the self."

Tags - Reina Daival



The alchemical matrix around the vat responded to her touch before she even raised her hand. A pulse of heat shimmered across the containment runes, like a heartbeat stirring beneath polished glass. Darth Virelia stood barefoot in the sanctum, haloed in deep violet light, as the glyphwork spiraled open across the tank's surface in silent reverence. The gel inside began to swirl—slow at first, then more deliberate, like fingers brushing hair from a sleeping face.

No more dreaming.

She stepped forward until her breath touched the transparisteel, hands folded neatly behind her back. Her expression was not cruel. Not cold. It was patient, focused, attentive. A lover waiting for her subject to see her again.

"You're hiding," she whispered.

It wasn't an accusation. There was no scorn in her tone. If anything, it sounded fond—a soft indulgence for something so fragile, so painfully human.

She tilted her head.

"You've been hiding in your little mirrors," she continued, her voice low and slow as gravity. "Reflections of the girl you thought you might become. The dutiful. The radiant. The protector."

One bare hand extended, fingertips barely grazing the tank. There was a sizzle of energy, a low spark that kissed the surface and crawled in curling lines of violet across the etched runes. The Force moved through her fingers like silk drawn across skin—intimate, thick with suggestion.

"But those girls were never you, Apprentice."

Her use of the title was deliberate. Gentle. Possessive. Not Reina. Not Jedi. Not title or posture or mask. Apprentice.

It vibrated through the fluid like a forbidden note—sweet, corrosive, undeniable.

Virelia inhaled as if tasting the flavor of the title on her tongue. Her voice dipped further.

"They were costumes. Apologies. Wards against the truth." She circled the tank slowly, robes brushing her skin like whispering hands, her bare footsteps echoing with soft inevitability. "And now you're here. Embracing the only truth that you could ever achieve. Mine."

She stopped on the other side of the vat, hands sliding down the cool glass again, framing Reina's floating form from either side. Her eyes softened, but there was no warmth. Only intent.

"And I will always love you."

A whisper of movement—her fingers twitched, and the seal at the top of the tank began to hiss open. The nutrient fluid rippled. Not draining. Not releasing. Just… shifting. Thinning.

Enough to let the world in.

Enough for her voice to pierce the dream.

"Open your eyes."

The command hung in the air like perfume, like a drug, like gravity. Soft. Seductive. Impossible to ignore. The chemicals in the tank themselves worked their magic into Reina's mind, making it seem like the only choice.

"You've drifted in illusions long enough. This one… is real. And I want you awake for it."

She raised her hands slowly, the Force coalescing around her palms in a slow pulse of black and violet—alchemical energy woven with predatory grace. It slithered through the tank like fingers beneath a veil, kissing nerves, brushing through brainwaves, tugging ever so gently on consciousness. Dominate Mind.

A slow, soft voice would continue to press on her.

Obey.

Again. Again. Again.

The light in the chamber shifted, dimming to a warm, carnal glow—like the hours just before dawn, when the air tasted like promises and breathless silence. The flora on the walls dimmed in turn, leaving the tank and its occupant the center of attention, like a jewel bathed in moonlight.

Virelia stepped closer again, her lips nearly brushing the transparisteel.

"I'm going to show you how to feel again, Apprentice. Not in pieces. Not through pain. Not through duty or sacrifice."

She tilted her head, eyes half-lidded, her voice now a velvet whisper across space and fluid.

"I'm going to teach you what pleasure feels like when it isn't hiding from guilt."

Her tongue darted briefly over her lower lip, catching the edge of a smile. Not a grin. Not cruel. Just aware. Certain.

"You think this is captivity," she continued, tone musing. "But it's not. This is an answer to the question you were too broken to ask."

She rested her palm flat against the tank, and where she touched, the runes lit with soft violet. The sensation would pass through, translated into sensation—faint warmth where cold had reigned. A gentle pressure across the small of the back. A tickle of awareness behind the eyes. Soft, disarming touches where nothing had been allowed to touch in so long.

"And I. Will never. Ever. Abandon you."

Only enough to remind the body that it was still there. That Virelia would care for her, unlike every other being in this wretched galaxy.

"I won't hurt you," she said again, not a lie—because she didn't need to lie. "I will enhance you, I will make you perfect and I will make sure you are never ignored again. This is what you already want, even if you're too afraid to know it."

Another pause. A soft breath. A smile like dusk settling over the sea.

"You belong to me now, little shield. But not as a trophy. Not as a broken thing."

Her voice dropped to a purr, curling into every syllable.

"You're going to thrive in my hands."

Then she withdrew her touch, letting the energy slowly recede. She stepped back from the vat, gaze unwavering, posture relaxed—perfect control wrapped in flowing silk and bare skin and total, sovereign presence.

Virelia turned her back and walked toward the control altar. Her robes whispered against the stone like old prayers.

"Isn't that right, apprentice?" she said, not looking back.

A slow, soft voice would continue to press on her.

Obey.

Again. Again. Again.

 

[Reina Daival]

Tags: Darth Virelia

There was...no response. No visual response to the words. Not even any form of brain stimulation. The chemicals may have been trying to find their way into Reina's mind...but it was almost as if it wasn't there. As if it had shutdown everything it had needed to, to act as the ultimate defense. A defensive mirror in a way. Reflected inwards, reflecting all of the different lives Reina could have lived to herself, whilst reflecting back to Virelia, nothing but the darkness that laid inside of her. It would not crack. It would not break. For it was just the state Reina was.

The command to open her eyes came...and was near enough reflected back at Virelia. Was it some kind of tuant? A statement for the Darth to open her own eyes? Of course, it could be taken that way...but if anything, it was just the command bouncing back off Reina. There was no intention to it. It was just reactive. Reflexes. The only part of her that still worked right now, whilst everything else had shut down. She had no need to see in this moment. No need to even hear. All she had to do was hide. In the furthest reaches of her own mind, that she didn't even know about.

Even as the voice continued to press against the mirror, continued to bounce off it, Reina didn't respond. She didn't stir. The closest thing her state could be connected to would be that of the hibernation trance. To most, she would have appeared as being dead, though of course Virelia would know otherwise. For not even the faux-attempt at death would be able to save Reina from the Sith's gaze.

Not a single response came from Reina. Not at the comment about being an apprentice. About being ignored. Because...there was no-one to respond. Not in this moment. It was one final attempt for Reina's mind to defend itself. Shut down from all external and even internal stimuli. It would stay in this state for as long as it needed. For as long as it felt as if Reina was in danger, her mind would not open up. Not to anyone. Not even Reina herself. For all intents and purposes, Reina died on Tattooine. Her body just refused to acknowledge it.​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"A war on the self."

Tags - Reina Daival



Dead.

But not dead enough.

Darth Virelia stood with her back to the tank, the altar's low-lit console reflecting faint amber lines across her exposed arms. She didn't look at Reina, not this time. The chamber responded to her presence—bioluminescent glyphs pulsing like a held breath, machinery thrumming at the edge of sound, the very air waiting for instruction.

She lifted her hand and pressed her palm flat to the altar.

The tank behind her shifted. A deep, slow exhale of steam coiled into the sanctum. No sudden rush. No panic. Just inevitability in motion.

Protocol I: Extraction.

"Vital functions nominal," came the soft voice of the system, half-AI, half-alchemically tuned Force symbiote. "Cognitive activity: static."
A pause. Then, almost admiring:
"Shielding is organic. Rooted in dissociative trauma. Beautifully constructed."

Of course it was.

Virelia smiled.

The tank's internal matrix shimmered as the Force-synced interrogation suite came online. This was refinement.

It didn't try to tear through Reina's mind. It listened to it.

The way a symphony listens to silence for rhythm.

"You buried yourself beautifully, Apprentice," Virelia said at last, turning back to face the tank. Her tone was almost affectionate. "But I don't need your permission to know you."

She reached out, pressing a single finger to one of the floating holospheres now orbiting the altar. The sphere rippled, projecting fragments of memory as resonance—frequencies of the Force encoded in memory-thread logic.

The chamber lit with whispers, all those whispers Virelia could take.

Each was a line of code in the neural lattice that was Reina's mind.

Virelia moved through them like an artist sculpting smoke.

The Force was not simply power—it was structure. A map. And Virelia had spent years learning how to read its grammar in others. She didn't need to break Reina to see her. She only needed to understand the rhythm of her silence.

And that rhythm was aching.

She accessed the memory strata slowly, calling to the fragments that Reina had discarded but not destroyed. There were no names. No screams. Just emotional signatures.

Memories untethered from context.

Data unmoored from will. And Virelia catalogued it.

This was research.

She would know everything Reina knew: hyperspace lanes, security clearances, Jedi outposts, informant networks, secret histories, weapon patterns, passwords. The friends she would die for. The ones she'd already forgotten. The weak links.

The parts of Reina that still believed in something.

"None of this is for you," Virelia murmured, speaking now to the body floating gently in the golden fluid. "This isn't about your redemption. Not yet. This is about your utility."

Her hand moved again, summoning a second sphere. This one pulsed red.

It was colder. Rougher. The Force-memory of combat. Kill-switches. Defensive programming. A map of the pain she'd taken and the pain she'd given. Lightsaber forms half-mastered. The angle of her blaster grip. A scream from a mission. Blood on concrete.

Virelia closed her eyes, letting the sound wash over her.

Information was intimacy.

"Your mind has already surrendered, even if you haven't," she whispered.

She stepped away from the altar and returned to the tank. Her fingers brushed the surface with reverent care, as if to thank Reina for the knowledge she would never knowingly give.

"You will never be alone again, Apprentice," she breathed, violet eyes flickering with something deeper than lust—ownership. "Even in your silence, you speak to me."

The protocols would run for hours, days if needed.

She could wait.

After all, this was only the beginning.

 

[Reina Daival]

Tags: Darth Virelia

It was hard to pry into a mind which was barely functional. Broken. Hanging on by a single thread. A single ounce of hope. Hard, but not impossible. Not everything would be able to be gathered. Reina wasn't a pilot, she didn't understand hyperspace lines. Security clearances for the GA and Jedi would have been easy to somewhat get all being said. Most of what wasn't personal information was easy to get access to. Places she had mostly recently been to flowed from her mind, even if it wasn't anywhere special. Tattooine. Tython. Coruscant. Just large orbs showing up in her mind, with no words, sounds or explanations coming to them.

The pain was easily mapped. Everything Reina had went through. It was basically over her entire body. Every single blaster bolt she had taken. Every broken bone. Every cut from her childhood. None of that was kept secret. Why would it be? Reina wore her pain on her sleeve. It was visible, even when she tried to hide it. All of the pain that was nestled inside of her. It was always seen physically. The instincts that always pushed her forward. It was easily recorded...

But what wasn't so easily recorded was anything personal. Memories. Friends. Family. Loved ones. Each time it tried to get access to one of those, it would just be met with something. A phrase. An image. For memories? It was just a simple flash of the sea. Over and over again. No words. No sounds. Just the sea. For Friends? It was just Reina's voice repeating, over and over again.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Endlessly recorded down. The same could be said for her family...except the voice was softer. Sweeter. More child-like. Not harmed by any of the events that would come to it...

"Mama...Mama...Papa...Papa...Mama...Mama...Papa...Papa"

And then finally, whenever it tried to get accessed to the people that Reina loved...

"They deserve better...They deserve better...They deserve better..."

It would all repeat over and over again. The only memory that Serina was allowed access to...was that of Reina decided vengeance was no longer worth it. After the discussion Reina and Valery had. That anger wasn't worth it. A blind obsession would only lead Reina to an early grave...and so she had given up on an obsession for vengeance​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"A war on the self."

Tags - Reina Daival



The chamber was quieter now—quieter in the way a predator's den falls silent before the strike. The data streams scrolling across the altar's projections dimmed, no longer the frantic dance of raw extraction but the slow, satisfied thrum of completion. Not everything, no. That was never promised. A mind like Reina's—fractured, locked in on itself—was not a vault to be broken open in one night. It was a coastline worn down by tides. The sea would give its treasures only when it wished.

And yet… Virelia had enough.

Her violet eyes lingered on the rotating orbs of data—Coruscant, Tython, Tattooine—places without the warmth of narrative or detail. She needed no explanations; the absences were as telling as the revelations. The pain maps were exquisite, a living cartography of scars and shrapnel, each one a chapter of her subject's history. Some wounds had been sewn shut, others still bled under the skin.

The real intrigue lay in the walls. The reflexive sea that rose each time she reached for memory. That endless chant of apologies, the childish invocation of mama and papa, the bitter mantra that those she loved deserved better. Each repeated barrier was a lesson in its own right—how the mind armors itself not with violence, but with tenderness.

It pleased her.

She leaned forward, hands resting lightly on the altar, watching the final strings of extracted data fade into storage. "So careful," she murmured, her voice dipping into a tone meant only for herself. "Even in collapse, you guard what matters. Admirable. Maddening."

Her fingers danced over the control glyphs, initiating the reserve generators. A low vibration rolled through the sanctum, deep and sensual, like the breath of some ancient beast turning in its sleep. The power conduits along the wall lit with molten gold, their glow crawling toward the base of the tank. The sequence was older, stranger, a productive of a long ago age. It would be ready for her true work soon enough.

But not yet.

Her gaze drifted back to Reina's suspended form, drifting in her self-made ocean. "You could have been so much more," she said softly, not in derision but in a kind of genuine lament. "If someone had taught you how to spend yourself wisely. If someone had given you… the right stage."

The words tasted of truth on her tongue.

Seduction—real seduction—wasn't the crude flash of power or the blunt edge of demand. No, she'd learned that to claim someone entirely, she had to slip into the shape they already craved. A tyrant's chains meant nothing if they didn't feel like the wrists belonged in them.

It was an art she had once resisted.

Control was her element. Control was everything. She was a sculptor who never put down the chisel, a conductor who never let the orchestra breathe between notes. But over time—through victories hard-won and prey that slipped away—she had learned a bitter truth: to take everything, you had to be willing to give something.

Even if that something was control.

The thought made her jaw tighten for an instant. She loathed the feeling of loosening her grip, hated the risk that came with allowing someone else's rhythm to dictate the next step. And yet… when done correctly, it was not surrender at all. It was bait. It was the sensation of freedom offered in one hand while the other hand slipped the collar in place.

Her eyes half-lidded as she let herself imagine—Reina's guard lowered not through threat, but through recognition. Through the intoxicating illusion that here, finally, she was seen without judgment. Virelia could wear that mask as long as needed. She could be the thing Reina's wounded heart wanted to lean against, the quiet place where the sea stopped rising to swallow her whole.

Because in truth, that was the fantasy. Not the dominance—no that would come at the end, a climax to her grand design. The fantasy was real, caring, unconditional love. And if she was to see Reina bloom into the creature she could be, she would have to give her that love… just long enough for her to crave it.

That's when Virelia realised the truth, to create and maintain a fantasy, to build a lie so comforting that it could eventually be turned against it's owners mind, to take away truth and leave only what Virelia slowly infected their reality with?

That was a type of control on it's own.

She stepped away from the altar, the sound of her bare feet against the stone swallowed by the hum of the growing power. Her shadow stretched across the tank as she came to stand beside it again, her fingers trailing idly across the glass.

"You'll think it's yours," she whispered, her tone like a promise spoken into the dark. "The choice. The warmth. The air you breathe. And when you love it too much to let it go…"

Her palm pressed flat against the surface, feeling the faint thrum of the systems through the glass. The reserve generators' glow had reached its zenith now, saturating the chamber in a molten halo.

"…then, little shield, it will already be mine."

She allowed herself the smallest smile, not of triumph but of satisfaction at the inevitability of it all. Every lesson she had bled for, every technique refined, every mask perfected—it was all coalescing here, in this moment, with this broken, beautiful thing suspended before her.

And when the real work began, when the power she was building would pour into this chrysalis, Reina would awaken not as the woman she had been… but as the creation Virelia had designed.

The generators hummed deeper, a sound almost like a purr.

"Sleep," she said softly, almost tenderly. "Dream. I'll take care of the rest."

The shadows seemed to draw closer, as if listening. The power circled the tank, patient, waiting. And Virelia, still poised in perfect control, waited with it—ready to play the role her prize needed, no matter how much she despised the taste of borrowed restraint.

Because when the moment came to reclaim it, she would not simply have control.

She would have everything.

Then, she finally spoke as a goddess, ready to carve mortal flesh and bone alike:

"Begin."

 

[Reina Daival]

Tags: Darth Virelia

The alchemical and genetic transformation began quite swiftly, as Reina stayed contained in her own mental bubble. Her own safe space. Yet...her past would also slowly start to filled in. Her pain map, for lack of a better term began to wiped clean. The scars and injuries Reina once had seemingly reverted, leaving her absent of any markings. Her skin being as smooth and as soft as a newborn, even her face were the small scars she once had faded away. The scars of previous battles slowly being lost, even the scars of which led her to join the order, blaster bolt wounds and blade wounds vanishing into nothingness. Almost as if it was a new start for Reina.

Yet the biggest wound of all slowly came to be fixed. It was as if Reina was like a statue of clay being moulded, as the missing "piece" that was her leg started to reform. The details would be hard to put into words, as the once missing limb was starting to reform. The lost limb that Reina had grown so fond of, that she had came up with alternative weapons for, was finally back. In a way, one could see that Reina was whole once more!...Yet the limb would not last for long, as it seemed to fuse together. Reina's body slowly but surely shifting amongst the vat, as the two legs fused into one, revealing a floating tail that swished and swayed amongst the fluid.

Yet that was not the only change that came to Reina. Small patches of her body hardened, revealing shimmering scales that reflected the light amidst the vat. A sudden rush of bubbles flickered through the fluid, as a small series of openings formed alongside her neck, becoming that of gills to help her survive below the waves. Her skin even seemed to grow paler, yet the most distinct change of all was the forming of sharp claws at her hands, alongside that of a vicious set of fangs that filled her mouth. Shapeshifting was something that she was swiftly going to need to figure out once she had awoken...but that was not important for now...

A few subtle twitches came from her throat as well, with the redhead's vocal chords slowly shifting as well. With the time passing moment by moment, in a way, Reina was losing her humanity. Becoming something other than the human she was. It was perhaps only furthered by the genes she already had passed down from her family A family that she knew so little about yet was such a key part of what was going on with Reina's shifting. She had already had quite the...bloodthirsty nature of the Ersansyr, the instincts of a predator that would hunt its prey evident when she fought...yet now she was finally starting to have the physical appearance of one.

And so there she floated. The newly formed Ersansyr floating inside their glass cage, still protected by their mind...and utterly unaware of what had transpired to them.​

 

[Darth Virelia]

"A war on the self."

Tags - Reina Daival



The sanctum was warm with the soft gold light of the reserve generators, their hum now lowered to a steady, satisfied purr. The transformation chamber no longer sang with raw power—it breathed. Each pulse through the alchemical conduits was smoother, more confident, as if the room itself understood that its work had gone perfectly.

Virelia stood barefoot before the vat, hands clasped lightly behind her back, her violet gaze tracing the shape of her creation. Not the girl she had taken from Tatooine—no, that girl was gone in the same way a lump of marble is gone after the statue emerges. What floated now was… art.

The smooth, unscarred skin was the first thing she noticed in the new light—fresh, pale, unmarred by the ledger of old pain. Not a scratch, not a mark to betray the battles Reina had survived. Even her face was clean of those faint, human flaws Virelia had always known were there, the small, hidden ridges of old breaks and burns erased as if they had never existed.

And then the tail, sleek and fluid, drifting in the nutrient suspension with a lazy, serpentine grace. It was an elegant solution—one limb instead of two, but more dangerous, more flexible, and perfectly at home in the water. The tail's subtle movement caught the refracted light from the tank's base, scattering it in hypnotic ripples over the scales now blooming across her flanks and shoulders. Those scales shimmered with each sway, opalescent and alien.

The gills along her neck were delicate but purposeful, fluttering faintly as the fluid cycled through. The claws and the fangs were another touch—purely Virelia's indulgence. She had not merely restored her prize; she had refined her. She had brought her closer to the predator her instincts had always hinted at.

And the voice—Virelia had heard the shifting in the vocal chords. A low resonance to come, one that would make words purr and threats cut deep without ever being raised.

Every change was deliberate. Every choice was hers. And there had not been a single misstep.

She allowed herself the faintest smile. This was the part she enjoyed almost as much as the work itself—the moment where the pieces were set, where the transformation was sealed, and where she could simply… wait.

One week. Perhaps less. The body needed time to settle, for new tissue to adapt, for the instincts of the Ersansyr to finish knitting themselves into her subject's reflexes. The mind, though—that would take more than nature's clock. That was where the real artistry would begin.

Virelia stepped forward, her palm meeting the warm glass of the vat. Not pressing—resting. Like a hand on the curve of a hip. Her voice dropped low, sweet and velvet-soft, carrying just enough weight to thread itself into the dreamless dark where Reina floated.

"Reina," she breathed, the syllables a caress. "You can't hear me now. Not in the way you will. But I will say this anyway… because it is true."

Her eyes softened, but the smile remained.

"I am doing this because I love you."

It was not a lie—Love, for her, was possession, protection, reshaping. Love was never letting go.

"I could have left you broken. Could have left you to fade away into the desert, into the nothing you thought you wanted. But I saw you, and I could not allow that. You are mine, Reina. And I keep what's mine."

Her fingers traced a slow line down the glass, following the contour of Reina's drifting shoulder.

"I will come back for you when you are ready. When you wake, you will see the gift I've given you. A body worthy of what you are meant to become. A form that will never again be at the mercy of this galaxy's cruelty."

The words rolled out like warm water, no edges, no heat—just promise. Just inevitability.

"And when I return," she said finally, her voice dipping into that almost-whisper that could curl in the ear like smoke, "we will begin the work that matters most. You will learn to love what you are. You will learn to love me for giving it to you. And in that love, my dear Reina… you will never be afraid again."

She stepped back, letting her hand fall away from the glass, the light catching briefly on her rings before they vanished into shadow. The vat continued its slow, patient hum, keeping the new Ersansyr safe, suspended, and waiting.

Virelia turned toward the door, the scent of the sanctum's floral musk lingering in her wake.

She did not look back. She didn't need to. The next time she stood here, Reina would be ready to see her. And to believe her.