The light faded behind me until it became only a pulse in the distance. Ahead stretched a field of silver mist that rippled with every breath. Each step stirred faint motes of luminescence from the ground, as though the air itself remembered fire.The silence was alive. I could hear it breathing, a low pulse that moved through the space around me like the heartbeat of something enormous and unseen. The horizon curved inward, pulling me closer with every step.The storm was gone, but its memory clung to me. The scent of ozone still lingered. My clothes were torn, my hands scraped, yet none of it felt real. The warmth that had protected me in the storm now burned quietly beneath my skin, pulsing like an ember refusing to die.Elara’s face would not leave my mind. The image of her reaching for me as the bridge tore apart replayed again and again, sharp enough to wound. I could still feel the weight of her fingers slipping from mine, the way the light swallowed her. It was the kind of mom

The ground beneath us collapsed. Light twisted around my body as the city above dissolved into smoke. For a moment, I felt weightless again, suspended between falling and breaking. Then the light vanished, and I struck hard stone.When I opened my eyes, the world was gray.Ash drifted from a sky that had no sun. The air shimmered with heat, yet the wind was cold enough to sting. Mountains of blackened rock stretched in every direction, their shapes jagged and unnatural. Rivers of silver light crawled across the ground like veins through a corpse.I stood slowly, my body heavy from exhaustion. The pulse of my light had dimmed, but I could still feel it inside me, waiting. The silence here was different from the city’s. It was thicker, heavier, like the world had forgotten how to breathe.Seryn landed beside me, her armor streaked with soot. She looked around with wary eyes. “This is not the city’s doing. The portal threw us into another realm.”“What realm?” I asked.She crouched, brus

Every voice leaves a shadow in the silence.I awoke to the sound of breathing that was not my own. The air was weightless, the world still. A pale light stretched in all directions, without source or warmth. It felt like standing inside a thought that refused to end. The silence was so complete that it became a sound, pressing against my skull until I could almost hear my own heartbeat echo through it.Then the whispers began.They were faint at first, ripples across the silence. I turned, but there was no one. The light around me shimmered like a mirror disturbed by the wind. The whispers grew clearer. Some called my name. Others laughed. Some cried. All of them sounded like me.I took a step forward, and the ground responded like glass bending under weight. Each movement left behind a faint reflection, an image of myself that lingered for a moment before fading. When I stopped, one of the reflections did not fade. It stood, staring back at me. Its eyes were hollow.“Where am I?” I a