A Brand-New Building: The Starborn Altar

"Notification: Territory upgrade complete. [Ebonreach] has reached Level 5. New structures unlocked: Starborn Altar, Starborn Totem, Waygate."

Every scrap of interest in tonight's grind evaporated the moment the notification finished resolving.

Kael was already summoning Thunder Roc before the chime had fully faded, excitement lighting behind his eyes.

The leveling ground he'd picked sat close enough to Ebonreach that the flight back took only minutes.

Tonight's resources had gone entirely into the upgrade itself, with nothing spared for walls or outer defenses, so from the outside the city looked essentially unchanged. The real transformation had happened at its heart.

Where the open plaza had once stood bare around the floating Starstone, a towering pyramid now rose in its place: pure white stone, veined through with poured metal and dense, glowing rune-work, studded with scattered gemstones that caught and scattered the Starstone's own light.