It was her gaining access to Darkness power. At that point, she had no Light power but was able to use Hive magic. Her D1 lore showed she used the ahamkara bone to get Hive eyes. Which gave her access to Hive magic and that’s how she survived being lost in the Hive tunnels all that time. I mean some answers say it isn’t definite but she didn’t have Darkness power prior but has it later with no explanation. Well we see how we gained Darkness power in BL and it doesn’t seem much different then what she did. We had to learn how to access non Light power for the first time. She’s already learned how to access non Light power already. So to me, without any other event to show where she learned, the process of elimination only leaves one known event. Her touching the statue. Destiny lore has a lot of intentional mystery and vagueness. Some of it is just window dressing to gloss over new or changed aspects of the storyline.

[i]Understanding.[/i] Remember, Savathun was expending a lot of effort to keep us from communing with The Deep. Or at least the servants of the Deep that the Pyramids represent. Eris lost her connection to the Light when she lost her Ghost. So the only Light she has is what is currently a part of her. Most of her power comes from the Darkness which she is connected to through the Ahamkara bone that is probably in the orb she carries. When she touched the statue she probably got a surge of Darkness-infused power. [spoiler]Much like we did when we communed with the pyramids under Elsie Bray/ Exo Steanger’s direction in Beyond Light. Then experienced again in The Prophecy Dungeon. Until Shadowkeep the conflict we’d seen the conflict between Light and Dark as this Manichaean struggle between Good and Evil, but Shadowkeep is where we start to understand that the conflict is more complicated. That Light and Dark are more akin to primal forces that are just flip sides of a coin. Order vs Chaos. Creation vs Destruction. Harmony vs Conflict. That Good and Evil are on a different axis completely…and that Light and Dark are just sources of power and only become Good or Evil based on what you do with them. A point supported by the evil doing Lightbearers of the Dark Ages (The Warlords), and many touched by Darkness trying to do good: Elsie Bray, Eris Morn, The Drifter, Mara Sov. This creates a vision and moral landscape similar to what used to be called The Potentium Heresy in Star Wars Lengends continuity. That there is only one Force. Light and Dark are just aspects of The Force…and only becomes Good or Evil through how it is used. This was not consistent with Jedi doctrine that Light was inherently good and Dark intrinsically evil. Thus it was considered a heresy. The story is also getting more interesting. No longer being a tribal war between species where humans are definitionally good and everything else is evil. But one wher it is a conflict of conscience. Where Guardians are at the center of a cross-species alliance that seeks to protect all life. Not just human life. But it’s a position of conscience that some aliens like Mithraax are better exemplars of than a former human like Lakshmi-2. So Witch Queen stands to be a very interesting time to see where battle lines get drawn, and which alliances endure and which don’t.[/spoiler]

I get why some are saying that's when she gets her stasis ability, unless that was confirmed by Bungie I wouldn't accept that answer. But it is supposed to make you ponder. She had been using that orb/shard to commune in the season prior, I think, and it was something about breaking out of a designed logic, or being birthed, that whole tree with the silver leaves thing...so maybe when she touched the knowledge of the design, or a way to cheat the design was gleaned upon her mind. We invaded a consciousness once, it was an interpretation we were familiar with, perhaps her consciousness was invaded differently. (Seriously I'm wanting to go back now and see when that season happened, it's starting to feel like it was just before beyond light now...either way, wouldn't take stasis as an answer, something communal happened) Edit: it was SoA, so after shadowkeep, but again, that shard has always been a communal device...and what happened there really has lead us to where we are now...that was a pivotal moment...forsaken set up crow, but she has set up basically back to back to back expansions, bravo.

She got stasis and would’ve been corrupted if Elsie never taught her to properly use it.

It's her waking up to Stasis. She also doesn't work for Sav, ignore those ignorant answers.

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The real question, was Eris compromised when she was tortured by the hive, was that the first time she gained stasis, or had she already had it due to her ordeal with the hive, who are fashioned through/associated with stasis.

As others have already stated, this was Eris Morn's first encounter with Stasis and her obtaining the newest or at least reclaiming a power of the Darkness not seen used by Humanity since the Golden Age where Clovis Bray made tests with the elemental affinity. The smile is just Eris being creepy.