The Hollow Earth kept its secrets with a silence full of more questions than answers.

Lunar Elven Sanctuary, Depths of the Hollow Earth -

The echo of Poimandres's revelation—his identity as the Universal Mind, the divine inspirer of Hermes Trismegistus—still vibrated in the sacred cavern of the moon elves. Morgana Le Fay and Sorcha of the Crimson Hand stared at each other, the magnitude of what they had heard struggling to find a place in their already overloaded minds. The Chaos Dragon, their temporary and tormented ally, was the source of the Hermetic wisdom that Merlin and Aria, in distant Cancún, considered a pillar of ordered magic.

"This information..." Sorcha thought with cold urgency, the strategist's mind overcoming the Chaos mage, "Aria and Merlin... they trust the treatises of Hermes blindly. They must know the true source, the dual, perhaps even primordially chaotic nature of that knowledge. It could change everything in their fight against the Netlin and Cthulhu." Morgana nodded silently, her Fae eyes glowing with a new and dangerous understanding of the universe.

As they processed this, a soft moan escaped the lips of the figure lying on the bed of moon moss. Eleonora was beginning to wake up. Her eyelids fluttered, then slowly opened, revealing eyes that no longer burned with the dark fire of Nyx, but were clouded with confusion, pain, and a deep, almost unfathomable lassitude. She looked around, disoriented, her gaze lingering on the unfamiliar but vaguely familiar faces of Morgana and Sorcha.

"Where...?" she whispered, her voice barely a whisper. "Poimandres?"

Before they could respond, a scream of fury and pain rent the relatively still air of the sanctuary. Three moon elven figures, their faces gaunt and their eyes glowing with a mixture of recent trauma and unquenchable hatred, burst into the healing chamber. They were warriors, survivors of Cthulhu's control, their makeshift weapons—splintered moon crystal swords, obsidian daggers—raised.

"NYX!" roared the leader of the trio, his voice cracking with anguish. "Traitor! Corruptor! You will pay for our enslavement, for the desecration of our people!"

They launched themselves at Eleonora's defenseless form.

But the attack was intercepted with unexpected speed and fury.

"Not so fast, children of the moon!" Morgana Le Fay's voice was a whiplash, and in an instant, her form seemed to grow, to magnify. From her back, wings of shadow and fractured starlight spread with the terrible majesty of a Fae queen in her full power, each feather a fragment of night and shattered stars. She created a thorny barrier of darkness and iridescent glamour between the attackers and Eleonora, the shadow tendrils snapping like whips.

At the same time, Sorcha of the Crimson Hand reacted, not with the hesitation of one protecting an ancient enemy, but with the ferocity of one defending a vital asset in her own desperate game of survival. Her crimson gauntlet flashed, and a dome of chaotic fire and caked blood erupted around Eleonora, repelling a spear of lunar energy. "Back, fools!" she hissed. "You understand nothing!"

What most surprised the three attacking elves, however, was not the intervention of these two powerful, dark sorceresses. It was the figure of Lyraella, the elderly elven healer who had been tending to Eleonora. With agility unexpected for her age, she stood between them and their target, her arms outstretched in a protective gesture, her silver eyes glowing with unwavering sadness and authority.

"Halt!" she commanded, her voice resonating with the power of the undermoon itself. "Stop, brothers! Has the madness of the Abyss blinded you completely? Do you not see? The Elder Shadow, the entity you knew as Nyx, has abandoned her! Her influence has withdrawn!"

The three warrior elves stopped in their tracks, their weapons trembling, their faces a mask of confusion and suppressed fury.

"Elder Lyraella, what are you doing?" one of them stammered, a young elf with a deep psychic scar in his aura. "It's her! It's Nyx! She betrayed us, handed us over to Chaos, made us puppets for the Devourer!"

Lyraella slowly shook her head, her gaze fixed on the frightened and disoriented face of Eleonora, who was now struggling to sit up, oblivious to the immediate threat but feeling the surge of violent emotions. "Look at her well," the ancient healer insisted. "Do you see the black fire of devouring Chaos in her eyes? Do you feel the suffocating oppression of Nyx's will? I see only Eleonora. Wounded. Lost. As traumatized as many of us. What remains is the shell of the Master we once admired, before the Shadow of the Void claimed and twisted her."

Eleonora, barely conscious, her eyes wide open and filled with childlike terror, murmured a name, one that echoed in the cavern like A painful purity: "...Aria... where is Aria...?"

The sound of that name, spoken with such vulnerability, further disarmed the attacking elves. They looked from Eleonora to the towering Morgana with her wings spread, to the dangerous Sorcha with her chaotic magic crackling, and to their own respected healer, all of them defending the one they believed to be their greatest enemy. Confusion seized them. Hatred was a fire that consumed them, but the scene before them defied all logic, all understanding.

Poimandres, from his bed of shadows, emitted a low growl, a tremor that ran through the cavern, reminding everyone of the primordial power that still resided, albeit weakened, in that place.

The tension was unbearable. Would the avenging elves lower their weapons? What would happen when Eleonora fully awakened and faced the ghosts of her past and the reality of her crimes as Nyx? And beyond that, how would this new dynamic affect the desperate war raging in the depths and on the distant surface? The Hollow Earth guarded its secrets with a silence filled with more questions than answers.