Five years later
The City of Nine Spires rose from the once-blasted landscape like an impossible dream—architecture that defied conventional understanding, towers that seemed to both exist and not exist simultaneously, streets that followed geometric patterns visible only from impossible vantage points. What had begun as the Watchwards' Tower had evolved into something beyond mere structure: a living monument to transformation itself.
Reed stood upon the highest balcony of the central spire, his transformed body having settled into its new nature over the years. The artifacts no longer pushed painfully against his skin but had integrated fully into his cellular structure, visible now only as intricate, luminescent patterns that shifted beneath his surface like tides responding to unseen moons. His eyes—once human brown—now refracted light into spectrums no ordinary mortal could perceive.
