It had been three days since the world stopped breathing. Or maybe it was three hours. Time didn’t mean much anymore.The skies had cracked open the moment Kael vanished, spilling molten rain and ghostlight that burned without heat. Everything smelled of smoke like the end of something ancient that had finally finished dying.Lyra sat where the ground had split, her hands trembling over the faint, pulsing ember cupped in her palms. It was no bigger than a tear, yet it beat like a heart. His heart.Every so often, it would flicker softly at first, then in sudden bursts, like it was fighting to stay alive. Every flicker sent a jolt through her chest, burning and beautiful, like memory and grief tangled together.She didn’t sleep. Couldn’t. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw his face as the light swallowed him saw the moment he looked back. Not with fear. Not even with anger. But with something worse.Acceptance.The wind shifted, carrying whispers. Voices that weren’t voices phanto

There was no sky. No ground. No direction. Only the sound of breathing that wasn’t his own.Kael floated in a void of molten light, surrounded by a rhythm that pulsed like the beating of a colossal heart. Each pulse reverberated through his bones, each echo whispering names he had long since burned away.He couldn’t tell if he was alive or just a memory pretending to be. The world or what passed for it was built of veins of fire.Great rivers of liquid gold and black flame stretched infinitely in every direction, crisscrossing like the arteries of a living god. And Kael was suspended within them, his body half-solid, half-flame.He could feel it: the god’s pulse thrumming beneath his ribs, bleeding into his own heartbeat. When he breathed, the world breathed with him. When he blinked, the light trembled.And when he thought the fire answered. “So this is what remains of me.”The voice that spoke was his own, but deeper older, threaded with something terrible and vast. It resonated fro

Silence. Then breath. Kael’s eyes snapped open to a world without horizon. The ground beneath him was not ground at all but a living tapestry of shifting color like light rippling across a broken mirror.Above him, skies bled gold and crimson, bending like reflections on water.For a moment, he didn’t move. The air was heavy, vibrating with faint echoes of power his power, yet not his own. It was wild. Free. Dangerous.Then he felt it warmth beside him. Lyra.She lay on her side, pale against the shimmering plane, her hair spread like ink in the fractured light. He reached out, his hand trembling as he touched her cheek.Still warm. Still breathing. “Lyra…” His voice was hoarse. It felt strange half-human, half something else.Her eyelids fluttered open, revealing eyes that glowed faintly gold threaded through their green, as though the light of the divine had etched itself into her soul. She blinked slowly, her voice barely above a whisper.“Kael… where are we?”He looked around, bro

The fall never seemed to end. Light, flame, ash everything blurred into motion. Lyra’s screams were torn from her throat and swallowed by the collapsing sky.She didn’t know when she stopped falling and started floating. Somewhere between the fire and the dark, the world forgot to have direction.Then impact. A burst of pain. Cold water. Breathless silence.Lyra hit something shallow and half-frozen. For a moment, she lay still, the shock numbing every part of her. Her armor cracked, her pulse thudding unevenly in her ears.Then she coughed, spat mud, and dragged herself to her knees.The air was colder here, colder than any mountain wind. It smelled of stone dust and old rain, tinged with something sweet and metallic, like memory turned sour.The faint glow of veins ran through the cavern floor, thin streaks of amber pulsing in rhythm with a heartbeat not her own. She wasn’t dead. Not yet.Lyra staggered upright, her breath fogging. Her ribs protested, her left leg screamed with ever

The world began again with a heartbeat. Lyra’s eyes opened to a sky that wasn’t a sky at all vast, dark, streaked with rivers of faint blue light flowing upward instead of down.The ground beneath her pulsed like the skin of something alive, breathing slowly in the deep. Every breath she took came with the taste of cold iron and memory.She was lying on her side, half-submerged in what looked like water but felt like air. Each ripple glimmered faintly when it touched her, sending thin trails of light along her arms.The tether still burned at her wrist faint but unbroken. Her first thought wasn’t of herself. It was of him. “Kael…” Her voice came as a rasp, nearly lost in the stillness. “Where are you?”Only her echo answered. She pushed herself upright, every muscle stiff and aching. Her armor was cracked, her weapon gone.The abyss stretched around her in every direction, filled with drifting fragments stone, shattered symbols, broken wings, shards of cities she recognized and didn’t