The chasm swallowed them whole. Emily’s scream tore into the void, her fingers locked desperately with Adrian’s. Around them, the fractured world disintegrated into shards of light and coils of shadow, raining down like broken stars.The wind howled not real wind, but the rush of existence collapsing inward. Their bodies tumbled helplessly, pulled deeper into the abyssal spiral.Adrian’s grip was unyielding, even as blood streamed from his arms and golden sparks bled through the cracks in his skin. His eyes locked onto hers, fierce and terrified all at once. “Don’t let go, Emily!”“I never will!” she cried, her voice breaking under the roar of the storm.The spiral twisted tighter, funneling them downward. At the bottom, two doors waited, one forged from blinding white fire, the other from endless black steel. Both pulsed violently, each one a maw waiting to consume.Emily’s stomach lurched as the pull intensified, each door dragging at their bodies with magnetic fury. Her skin bliste

Silence. For a heartbeat, the world was nothing but silence. Emily floated in the void, her body numb, her ears ringing with the echo of Adrian’s final scream.Her arms still stretched out, clutching at nothing but fragments of golden light that scattered through her fingers like ashes.“No…” Her voice cracked, raw and hollow. She grabbed desperately at the fading sparks, pressing them against her chest. “No, no, no don’t you dare disappear!”The Between was gone. The storm of fractured colors had collapsed into a blank, infinite expanse. There was no sky, no ground, no horizon. Just endless whiteness, blinding and empty.Emily’s knees buckled as her body sank into nothingness. Pain roared through her every wound from the battle, every shard embedded in her veins, every ounce of exhaustion. But none of it compared to the shattering weight in her chest.Adrian was gone. She didn’t know how long she stayed there, clutching light that no longer warmed her. Minutes. Hours. A lifetime. The

The abyss swallowed everything. Emily’s body spun weightlessly, her screams lost in the void. Fragments of Adrian’s light and ash spiraled around her, scattering like dying stars. Her hands clawed desperately at the darkness, reaching for the shape of him but all she felt was emptiness.Then, the world jolted. Her back slammed against something solid. She gasped, coughing violently as air seared her lungs.She staggered to her knees, finding herself on the surface of another impossible plain, this one black as obsidian, veins of molten gold glowing faintly beneath its skin.Above her stretched a fractured sky, torn between blinding light and devouring shadow. Each side warred against the other, crackling with thunder that shook the ground beneath her.And at the center of it all, Adrian. Emily froze, her chest constricting. Adrian hovered above the ground, but not as one. His body had split.On one side floated a figure of radiant gold, his features sharp, serene, untouchable. His gra

The moment they let go, the world ceased to exist. The chasm’s pull tore through them like claws, ripping away fragments of light and shadow.The storm wasn’t just wind or gravity, it was memory, fear, regret, and rage all weaponized, crashing against them in relentless waves.The golden Adrian’s body fractured into burning threads, each strand of light dragging him toward dissolution.The shadow Adrian fared no better, his form splintering into shards of black glass, his edges bleeding into nothing. But through the chaos, both saw her. Emily.Suspended in the storm’s core, her body translucent, her essence unraveling with every surge. Her face twisted in agony, but her eyes half-golden, half-dark still reached for them.The storm clawed deeper. Images swarmed them: The orphanage fire. The dojo floor.The alley where Adrian first met Emily. The rooftop where she smiled at him, the first smile that wasn’t pity or cruelty.The golden half gritted his teeth, every image fueling his resol

Darkness had no bottom. Emily fell through it like a raindrop sliding down endless glass. There was no rush of wind, no sensation of speed, only silence. The kind that crushed thought. The kind that devoured hope.Her body was weightless, dissolving. She tried to scream, but the sound vanished before it left her lips.Am I… gone?For a moment, she almost let herself drift. It would be easier. Just surrender. No more fear, no more blood, no more Adrian tearing himself apart.But then, a faint warmth brushed her fingertips. A memory. She was standing barefoot in the training yard. Adrian was there, bruised and panting, refusing to put down the wooden sword though his arms shook violently.“You’ll break yourself,” she had told him. His reply had been ragged but stubborn. “Then I’ll break until I’m strong enough to protect you.”The image shattered, scattering like glass, and Emily’s chest convulsed with sudden grief. “No,” she whispered into the abyss. “I can’t forget this. I won’t.”Her