Crimson and gold streaked across the continental divide as dawn emerged, painting long shadows from the extraction team's position on the mountainside. The Temple of Eternal Twilight lay entombed beneath the mountain's bulk, its ancient chambers reduced to dust and memory by the catastrophic energy release during Klaus's transformation. Only the circular opening remained—a perfect geometrical wound in the mountain face, testament to power that defied conventional comprehension.
High Priest Valen knelt among the surviving cultists, his ritual-scarred face stripped of its customary certainty. Three millennia of preparation, generations of sacrifice, countless lives dedicated to a singular purpose—all culminating in this moment that had shattered every prophecy and expectation.
"You are not what we anticipated," Valen finally whispered, his voice carrying both reverence and mourning. "Yet you transcend our most exalted imaginings."
