Vyx’aria accepted the offered hand and slid elegantly from the
vornyx, the movement smooth and unhurried.
She let her eyes travel from the gold-robed ranks to the towering effigy of Maelzafan, and finally out across the sea of faces gathered to witness this moment.
When she spoke, her voice carried.
“Before we begin,” Vyx’aria said,
“I will make plain why you stand here today. Why we gather beneath open stone instead of within Maelzafan’s temple.”
She turned slowly, crimson gaze sweeping the crowd.
“History requires witnesses. And today marks the opening of a new chapter for the drow. A new era, one that will see many cities bound beneath a single banner.”
A pause. The air felt heavier.
“Such unity demands memory,” she continued. “
And it demands reckoning. We remember not only Maelzafan’s favor, but the price of failing Her.”
At her signal, academy mages stepped aside. From the shadows, they revealed a small, bound group: priestesses and commanders alike, faces hollowed by fear. Vyx’aria crossed the distance in long strides and seized them by the hair, dragging them unceremoniously into the center of the plaza. She forced them down, one by one, until they knelt upon the stone before goddess and crowd alike.
Her dagger slid free with a soft, deliberate sound.
“Kneeling before you,” Vyx’aria declared, lifting her voice once more,
“are the last remnants of those who dared to summon a beast that shattered Zar’Ahal’s streets… and those who clung to their loyalty to the failed queen, Dalrithia. Those who would drive drow to their destruction instead of bringing progress. Those who cost Maelzafan the last great sacrifice made to her."
She stepped behind the first priestess and, without ceremony, drove the blade home. The body collapsed forward, lifeless, the sound swallowed by the vastness of the plaza.
Vyx’aria did not stop speaking as she moved to the next.
“This,” she said coldly,
“is how rot is excised. Not hidden. Not tolerated. Cut away, so that something new may rise in its place.”
The dagger fell again. Final. Unyielding.
Across the plaza, some in the crowd flinched. Others watched in rapt silence. And among them, if
Azrakar stood concealed, he would recognize the truth with bitter clarity: nearly every soul brought to their knees here had played a personal role in his long torment.
Vyx’aria straightened, blade still in hand, and turned her gaze back to the masses.
“The old sins end today,” she proclaimed.
“The era that follows will not be gentle. But it will be clean.”
And Zar’Ahal understood exactly what kind of Queen would rise to claim it.
With the dagger still wet in her hand, she moved down the remaining length of the row, blood tracing faint lines along the blade that marked her lineage as surely as any sigil. Tor’Rahel steel, Tor’Rahel rites; a House long whispered of for its mastery of blood and the truths it compelled from flesh.
She stopped only when the last of the condemned lay still.
Then she turned.
Crossing the plaza with measured grace, she closed the distance to the dais and came before Hebemarri. Without flourish, Vyx’aria inclined her head in a calm, formal bow, dagger placed back on her hip, posture precise.
“I am ready,” she said simply.
