The air in the heart of the Iron Mountains did not just freeze; it shattered. But at the center of the swirling blizzard, the laws of nature had been set aflame. Gwen stood atop the jagged peak of the Silent Altar, her silhouette barely human amidst a corona of suffocating darkness and blinding light.
The Black Sun—the forbidden core she had absorbed to defeat the Architect's final war machine—was no longer a power she wielded. It was an apex predator consuming its host.
Her skin, once as fair as starlight, was now a frightening canvas of molten cracks. Beneath the surface, her blood glowed with a terrifying, incandescent violet-gold.
Every breath she exhaled came out as a plume of white steam that hissed against the falling snow, and the very stone beneath her boots began to liquefy, turning into a sluggish, glowing pool of magma.
