The ceremony should have been magnificent. Instead, it felt like a funeral.
Reed stood in the center of the Eternal Citadel's most sacred chamber, surrounded by the assembled representatives of both generations, and felt the weight of cosmic responsibility shifting in ways that defied every assumption about the nature of power itself. The Wounded Crown materialized above his head—not the simple circlet of authority he had worn for two decades, but something that pulsed with the accumulated wisdom of every battle he had fought, every mistake he had made, every victory he had achieved at prices too terrible to calculate.
"The Power Transfer Protocols," he said, his voice carrying harmonics that resonated with the dimensional barriers around the chamber. "Two decades ago, I received this crown from the generation that came before me. Today, I pass it to the generation that comes after."
