The destruction of the clone had been a silent cataclysm, leaving nothing behind but the bitter scent of ozone and a fine, grey ash that swirled into the mountain mist. But for Gwen, the end of the battle was the beginning of a far more terrifying transformation.
As the last violet spark of the doppelgänger vanished, the light in Gwen's eyes didn't just fade; it collapsed. She didn't fall gracefully. She hit the obsidian glass of the altar with a sickening thud, her body seizing once before going deathly still. The black, star-shaped scar on her palm—the Mark of the Architect—began to pulse with a rhythmic, subterranean violet light, as if a second heart had been planted beneath her skin.
"Gwen!" Lucien's roar echoed across the peaks, a sound of such raw, unbridled agony that it seemed to crack the very foundations of the Iron Mountains.
