Everything opened.
Not with violence. Not with chaos. There was no explosion, no tearing sound, no visible fracture splitting the horizon apart. Instead, the space ahead of them unfolded slowly, deliberately—like something ancient pulling back a veil it had no intention of hiding behind anymore.
The unstable terrain stretched outward, thinning at the edges, dissolving into something deeper than emptiness. The half-formed sky dimmed, losing what little structure it had managed to hold, until it resembled nothing more than a faint idea of light rather than light itself.
And beyond it—
There was no world.
Liora felt the change before she could fully see it.
The connection she had formed with this place—the fragile, reactive link that allowed her thoughts to shape reality—did not disappear.
It faltered.
Not like something weakening.
Like something being interrupted.
Her breath caught.
A sharp, instinctive reaction she couldn't suppress.
For the first time since this began—
