The skies above Elira wept gold.
Not rain. Not light. But the threads of fate themselves—shimmering filaments unraveling from the heavens, falling like divine tears as reality strained beneath the weight of the coming collapse.
Celestia stood at the center of it all.
A living nexus of faith, memory, and mortal pain.
Her bare feet hovered inches above the cracked marble of the Dominion Spire's top, her body radiating an ethereal warmth that pushed back against the oncoming storm. Around her, old prayers echoed—fragments of hymns long abandoned. The voices of every priestess who came before her whispered inside her bones.
She knew what this meant.
And what it would cost.
Darius appeared in the breach between realms, the forge-light of his dominion swirling violently behind him. His armor glowed with fragments of burning code; the Forge Throne's will pulsed through his veins.
