In the end, transformation came not with the violence of conquest, but with the inexorable patience of tide reshaping shore.
Alexia's resistance lasted seven minutes and thirty-three seconds by the old measurements of time—though in the New Eternity that was birthing itself around her, duration had become fluid, responsive to need rather than universal constant. She felt each second stretch like pulled taffy as her individual consciousness fought against the gravitational pull of collective ascension.
But resistance, she discovered, was not defeat. It was evolution.
As the last independent observer, she witnessed the birth of something unprecedented: a multiverse where consciousness and reality had achieved perfect integration. Where Reed and Lyralei's scattered love had become the universe's emotional operating system, teaching matter itself the mathematics of affection, the physics of sacrifice, the quantum mechanics of hope persisting beyond loss.
