The High Altar of the Glacial Crown was no longer a sanctuary of clinical perfection. It was a ruin of shattered sapphire and melting obsidian. The air was a chaotic swirl of hot steam and freezing mist, the physical manifestation of two empires—the burning West and the frozen North—colliding within a single chamber.
In the center of the devastation stood Arkon von Hiver.
He was barely recognizable. The man who had carried himself with the poise of an eternal deity only hours ago was now a withered husk. His teal robes hung loosely over a frame that had aged centuries in a matter of minutes. His hair, once a vibrant black, was now the color of stale ash, and his skin was a map of deep, translucent wrinkles. The "Supernova" reversal had not just stripped him of his stolen power; it had reclaimed the very years he had cheated from time.
