The silence after Thyra's dissolution felt heavier than the battle itself. Selena stood in the crater of their confrontation, the ice flower's water still cooling in her palms, when the first fracture appeared. It started as a hairline crack in the air beside her a shimmer like heat waves rising from sun-baked stone, except the air here was still cold from the Frostborn Queen's presence. The crack widened, and through it stepped another version of herself.
This other Selena was younger, unmarked by the weight of impossible choices. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders instead of being bound back for battle, and her eyes held a lightness that the real Selena could barely remember possessing. Most striking of all, she bore no trace of the Gate's influence no flames danced around her fingers, no otherworldly power hummed beneath her skin. She was purely, simply human.
