The thread burned. Not hot alive. Rayyan felt it the instant his fingers closed around the thin filament of light Aaliyah had summoned.It pulsed against his skin like a heartbeat that didn’t belong to him, vibrating with strain, memory, and something dangerously close to fear. The moment he grasped it, the world reacted.The stitched sky above them convulsed violently, seams tearing wide as if reality itself were recoiling. The ground disintegrated beneath their feet, dissolving into a rushing cascade of white fragments.Aaliyah shouted over the roar, “Don’t let go!”Rayyan didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The thread yanked them forward and the world let go. There was no transition. No falling. No tearing. One instant they stood on the brink of a dying convergence field.The next, Rayyan’s feet struck something solid that was not ground, not air, not space. It was presence. He staggered, barely keeping his balance as the light snapped taut, anchoring them to a place that had never been ma

The tremor did not stop. It spread. Miriam felt it first through Rayyan’s hand a subtle tightening, a fractional delay between intention and motion.Then through the air, which thickened as if resistance itself had increased. The city below flickered again, not glitching this time, but hesitating.Rayyan pulled his hand back sharply. “Miriam,” he said, low and urgent, “you can’t do that here.”She didn’t move. “Here?” she echoed. “You mean your world?”He flinched. “This isn’t ownership. It’s containment.” “That’s just ownership with better branding.”The ground beneath them shuddered again stronger now. In the city below, a traffic line broke its perfect rhythm. A pedestrian stopped walking for no scheduled reason. A child looked up at the sky and frowned, confused.Rayyan closed his eyes. “I can feel it adjusting,” he whispered. “The system is trying to decide whether to reject you or rebuild around you.”Miriam’s jaw tightened. “It doesn’t get to decide that anymore.” She took a st

The tear inside Rayyan was not metaphorical. Miriam felt it. A sudden, nauseating lurch like gravity had reversed inside his chest.He staggered, gasping, fingers clawing at the air as if something vital were being pulled out of him. “Rayyan!” She wrapped her arms around him just as the core beneath the city convulsed.The ground split wider. Not cracking. Opening. Light poured upward from the exposed core not white, not gold, but a deep, corrosive violet that warped everything it touched.Buildings above bent inward, streets curving like soft metal toward the exposed center. The presence laughed again closer now.“So much strain,” it murmured, delighted. “So many compromises stacked on top of each other.”Miriam felt it circle them not physically, but positionally, always just behind her awareness. Rayyan sank to one knee, breath ragged. “I can’t hold it” he choked.Miriam knelt with him, gripping his face, forcing him to look at her. “Then don’t,” she said urgently. “Don’t hold feel

The city did not recover. It learned. Rayyan realized it in fragments. A woman tearing fabric from her own jacket to bandage a stranger’s arm without asking permission.A group of teenagers forming a line to pass water buckets from a cracked hydrant laughing nervously, terrified and proud at the same time.An old man standing in the middle of a collapsed street, shouting directions with no authority except that people listened. None of it optimized. None of it aligned. And none of it waited for him.The realization hit harder than the collapse. Rayyan stood ankle-deep in ash beside Miriam, holding a twisted beam steady while two responders cut someone free beneath it.His arms burned. His hands shook. Sweat stung his eyes. He’d never been this tired. Not when holding together entire worlds. This exhaustion had no abstraction to hide behind.It was honest. “Careful,” Miriam murmured, adjusting her grip. “If you tilt it too far left, the pressure shifts.” He nodded, jaw clenched, and ad

The presence did not strike. It waited. That was its cruelty not force, not urgency, but patience sharpened to a blade.The distortion pulsed softly behind the displaced anchor, widening and narrowing like a breath taken by something that did not need air.Rayyan stood in front of it with nothing to shield him. No lattice of probability. No stabilizing hum. No authority encoded into the bones of reality.Just a man standing where the world was thin. Miriam dragged the other anchor back, putting her body between him and the distortion.The man shook violently, saltwater dripping from his sleeves, eyes fixed on the breach like it might look back at him. “It knows you,” he whispered.Rayyan didn’t look away. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “And it knows I can’t stop it the old way.”The presence’s voice curled through the air, intimate and amused. “Still pretending you’re brave without your crown,” it purred. “Still standing where you don’t belong.”Rayyan felt its attention press against him n