The world broke.
The Obsidian Groves, ancient and unmoving for millennia, groaned under the pressure of power not meant to be contained. Giant stone trees cracked down their cores, their leaves of onyx crystal evaporating into stardust. Psychic shockwaves rippled outward, twisting gravity, making time stutter — forward, backward, still — then violently real again.
Ethan hovered a hundred feet above a shattered ravine, blood trickling from his lip, body battered but upright, already healing. His eyes were blazing a deep, multichromatic glow that shimmered like a sunrise filtered through blood.
Before him, Queen Ashtora hovered like a specter of judgment.
She no longer bore flesh.
She had become pure Psychic will — a radiant being of violet-white energy shaped like her former self, with tendrils of psionic flame spiraling off her spiked crown. Her ten psychic tail-spikes now circled her body like a halo of mental daggers, vibrating with enough force to shred continents.
