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

The path of light faded beneath my feet as I crossed into the city. The air changed the moment I stepped through. It was no longer the cold void of the Fracture but something warmer, alive, humming with quiet intention. The Dreaming City stretched before me, suspended within a sea of shifting stars. Towers of transparent glass rose like pillars of frozen flame. Bridges curved between them, woven from threads of light that shimmered as if breathing. The ground itself pulsed with color, responding faintly to my heartbeat.At first, I thought it was beautiful. Then I realized beauty was only its surface. Beneath the glow, there was a rhythm that felt wrong, too perfect, as though the city itself were imitating life rather than living it.A faint wind moved through the streets, carrying whispers that dissolved before I could catch them. Figures moved in the distance, walking patterns too exact to be human. Their steps matched the pulse of the ground. They did not look up, did not speak, a

The fires that had consumed the Dreaming City dimmed to faint embers, leaving the skyline painted in a haze of shifting glass. Smoke coiled through fractured towers where light bled through like veins beneath wounded skin. Kael moved through the wreckage, boots crunching on shards that reflected a thousand distorted versions of himself. Each step echoed deeper than sound, carrying the weight of memories he had not yet faced.The air was colder here. The silence stretched, alive with whispers that mimicked his breathing. The Dreaming City had quieted, but its walls still pulsed faintly, aware of what remained. The destruction from the night before lingered in the air like a wound refusing to close.He stopped beside a broken archway where mirrored fragments floated midair, suspended by invisible threads. They rippled faintly when he touched one, and his reflection blinked a moment too late. He froze. The air shimmered, and his mirrored self smiled without him.Th