The moment the Harbinger's body struck the ground and tore open the veil between realities, Selena felt something fundamental shift within her. The Abyss Crown's negation, which had been holding back the tide of transformation, suddenly found itself overwhelmed not by force but by simple inevitability. The sight of the deep Empire, of the throne that waited in its cosmic heart, had completed some circuit in the Gate's grand design that no amount of denial could interrupt.
Pain lanced through her bones not the familiar agony of gradual transformation, but the sharp, precise sensation of something fundamental cracking. She looked down at her hands and watched in horrified fascination as hairline fractures appeared along her knuckles, spreading up her fingers like spider webs of light. But this was not any earthly illumination this was bone-light, the radiance that emerged when the fundamental structure of existence began to show through the thin veneer of mortal flesh.
