The throne room of the Blackfang capital was no longer a place of sovereign grace. It had become a tomb of white fire and necrotic frost. Following the cataclysmic confrontation with the Ghost Queen, the air remained ionized, thick with the scent of burnt ozone and something ancient, something that smelled like the birth and death of a star.
Gwen stood at the center of the ruin, her hands trembling. She didn't feel like a victor. She felt like a vessel that had been overfilled with pressurized liquid, her skin barely holding back the tide of what she had become. The Solar Necromancer—a name that tasted like copper and honey in her mouth. Inside her, the blistering, righteous heat of the Sun fought a constant, agonizing war against the frigid, soul-eating vacuum of the Rot.
She looked down at her palms. Black veins, like ink spilled in water, pulsed beneath her translucent skin, glowing with a rhythmic, blinding white light. Every breath she took felt like inhaling glass.
"Gwen."
