Kael, an explorer who had spent years charting the End, was the first to see it. He reached the summit of a central pillar and stopped, his breath hitching in his glass-tinted helmet. The crystal wasn't a collection of flat planes anymore. It had gained .

It was no longer just a source of healing for the Dragon. It was a prism for reality itself.

The light in the End didn’t come from a sun, but from the crystals. High atop their obsidian pillars, they pulsed with a rhythmic, violet heartbeat that kept the Dragon tethered to this world.