The moment Elira stepped over the edge of the Fractured Gate, the universe collapsed.
There was no sky. No ground. No direction or gravity. Only endless, tumbling shards of reality whirling like fragments of broken mirrors in a sea of starlight. Time pulsed irregularly—sometimes slow and heavy, sometimes staccato and trembling—as if the very concept of chronology was bleeding.
Kael's fingers closed over hers, holding her in place with the only thing she had remaining to be certain of. His heat seeped into her, his presence enveloping her in a quiet as the insanity of the surroundings sought to tear her in half.
"Where… are we?" she whispered, the sound too big and too small all at once.
Kael's eyes glimmered with violet fire, narrowed against the glare of a thousand floating runes spiraling in the distance. "Between. This is the wound left when gods were silenced and the First Songs were broken. This is where forgotten power seeps, unbound and watching."
