The dust of Thalen's form lingered in the air, glowing faintly like ash carried by a dead star's wind. The city lay unrecognizable—half a skeleton of ruins, half a shattered mirror of fractured outcomes. Nothing was stable. Walls rose and fell, towers blinked between collapse and standing, the ground itself shifting as if the world hadn't decided what to become.
Leon remained on one knee, his chest heaving. The fractures across his skin glowed faintly, light leaking like cracks in glass. Every breath he drew seemed to grind against inevitability itself, as though the Fifth Pulse had carved him into something the world struggled to allow.
His allies rushed to him.
Roselia dropped to his side, hands glowing with golden light—only for the spells to sputter again, refusing to settle. She bit her lip, panic clear. "It's not working… you're not… healing the same anymore!"
