The morning came with the artificial brightness of the Healing Dimensions, but Reed felt no warmth from the synthetic sun. He stood before the mirror Lyralei had conjured—a simple thing of silver and possibility—and stared at the face that was his own yet somehow diminished. The eyes that had once burned with the power to reshape reality now held only the gentle glow of ordinary awareness.
The Fractured Crown of his consciousness bore invisible scars where the Dark's corruption had been cut away. Like a tree pruned too severely, what remained was alive but fundamentally altered. Where once his mind had encompassed multidimensional awareness, now he struggled to maintain focus on a single conversation. The powers that had made him the Liberator—the ability to free consciousness from any constraint—flickered like dying embers when he tried to access them.
