Neo continued to grow up. By the time Neo was ten, many things had changed in their family - for one, the palace residents had expanded, now including many other children, many other adults, and even new siblings of Neo's: her little brother [[Rasmus]], and half-siblings [[Eisa]] and [[Einmyria]] <small>(all of which are discussed, as they pertain to Maci, in the following sections)</small>. Chal had also, by this time, resurfaced and been captured by the palace in an off-site Elysium location in an unfolding project to turn Chal to the "good" side. Maci's emotions surrounding Neo's future realm had already started to bubble thanks to her annoyance and disapproval about what was going on with Chal, a sore spot given her history with Chal's father. Then, the day after Neo's 10th birthday, Maci and Tory were approached by Nyx, who requested that they come to her home urgently. Violent Death Ker - the now officially singular Death, as one of the things that had changed in a decade included the actual real ''death'' of Thanatos at [[Loki]]'s hands - was demanding to meet Neona now that she had come of age. Retorting that she had absolutely ''not'' come of age, and that Neo's training would begin at the age of 15 and not ''10'', Maci and Tory insisted on a compromise, allowing Ker to meet and speak with Neo just briefly, under supervision. Maci and Tory brought her there. For a short moment in the form of an out-of-body psychic link, Ker did speak to her, and then promptly vanished by dissolving into a puddle of blood.

This was the beginning in canon of Maci's carefully teetering tower of stifled, buried, compartmentalized trauma stretching back from many hundreds of years in the past, finally beginning to disintegrate. Neo was elated to have her scythe, something that she recognized intrinsically as a birthright - even as Maci visibly shrank back from it, and visibly pulled away from Neo herself. Logically, Maci knew that a simple symbolic weapon, the daughter she loved and cherished, and the specter of the villain who had tormented her, were three entirely separate things that had little to do with each other. But Maci was not thinking rationally. She was so distressed ''anyway'' by Chal's rehabilitation project that the presence of Neo's scythe was too much for her to bear. During this time, Maci's psyche crumbled. The collapse had been coming for ''millennia.''