The pain of transformation ebbed slowly, leaving Selena kneeling on the obsidian with her new wings those terrible, skeletal things spread behind her like the shadow of what she had lost. The green light pulsed through the bone, through the cracks that had been widened and filled with the Gate's essence, and each pulse felt like chains being forged link by link around her soul.
The Watcher stood before her, patient and eternal, as if it had all the time in the world. Perhaps it did. Time seemed to move strangely in its presence, pooling and eddying like water encountering stones in a stream. Dante remained frozen mid-stride, his face twisted in an expression of fury and desperation, electricity still crackling impotently around his suspended form.
