One hundred and fifty years after her rebirth, Selena walked through Ashborne's market district as morning light painted the cobblestones gold. She wore no crown, manifested no wings, dimmed her flames to barely perceptible warmth. To the casual observer, she appeared as simply another woman browsing the stalls—perhaps a bit too perfect in her features, too fluid in her movements, but nothing that demanded immediate attention or recognition.
Around her, the city thrived with a vibrancy that would have seemed impossible in her mortal lifetime. The market overflowed with goods from across the known world—spices from the desert kingdoms where Aether had worked for decades, textiles from the northern settlements where Aurora had helped establish new communities, fruits and vegetables from regions that had once been wasteland but were now fertile under careful cultivation. And everywhere, the sound of human life at its most mundane and beautiful—haggling, laughing, arguing, living.
