Time passed strangely in the space between death and resurrection. Selena existed as potential, as a seed of consciousness waiting in the heart of the eternal flame, aware but not awake, present but not active. Through the transformed fire that had woven itself into reality, she could sense the world continuing without her, could feel people learning to live in freedom, stumbling and succeeding in equal measure.
It should have been peaceful. It should have been enough.
But something was wrong.
At first, it was just a whisper at the edge of her awareness—a wrongness that didn't fit the pattern of the transformed world. The eternal flame had burned away every remnant of decree, had consumed marrow and abyss and all the structures that enabled oppression. The world should have been clean, should have been free to grow without the poison of hierarchy.
But deep in a place the flame hadn't reached, in a void that existed outside normal reality, something stirred.
The Damned Crown.
