The explosion of light faded into something gray and formless, and for a moment I thought I'd actually died this time.
Then the pain hit.
My chest. My ribs. My legs. My back. Every single nerve ending in my body screamed in unison like a choir that had been waiting years for the opportunity to perform its magnum opus of suffering. I was on my back, staring up at a sky that shouldn't exist, watching clouds roll past in colors that hurt to look at directly.
The Void Gate's atmosphere was destabilizing. I could feel it in the air, in the way the mana pressure that had been crushing us for hours was finally, mercifully, beginning to release. The core was dead. The dimensional seal was collapsing. We were going home.
If we survived the next five minutes.
"Monroe."
