Eighty years after Selena's rebirth, a century after she first felt the illness creeping into her bones, the family stood together on a hillside overlooking Ashborne one last time before beginning a journey that would take them far from the city that had been their anchor for so long. The sun was setting, painting the sky in shades of crimson and gold that seemed to echo Selena's own colors, and the city below glowed with the warm light of thousands of homes where people lived lives of freedom and prosperity.
"It's beautiful," Aurora said softly. She was sixty now, though she appeared no older than thirty, her aging nearly stopped by her elemental nature. She had spent the past decade traveling independently, establishing her own network of protected communities, forging her own path as guardian while remaining connected to her family through bonds that transcended distance.
