Metal screamed. The ambulance fishtailed across the wet asphalt, tires shrieking, red lights blurring through the downpour. Spike Miller’s hands clenched around the stretcher rails as the vehicle lurched sideways.“Driver! You’re too fast!” he shouted.“Brakes are gone!” the paramedic yelled back.The siren wailed once, then silence, impact. The world turned upside down. The roof crumpled inward. Shattered glass flew like rain.Spike slammed into the side wall, ribs cracking. Something hot and sharp drove through his shoulder. The stretcher flipped, pinning him to the floor.For a heartbeat, everything was still, except the faint sound of rain hissing on metal. He blinked, dazed. The paramedic lay slumped over the steering wheel, motionless.“No… no, no.” Spike groaned, dragging himself toward the man. His leg didn’t move. Pain shot up his spine.He pressed trembling fingers against the paramedic’s neck. No pulse. “God…” Spike’s breath came out shaky. “I can’t die here. Not like this.

The storm turned electric. Bolts of blue energy ripped across the highway, shattering asphalt and throwing sparks into the mist.Spike ducked behind a guardrail as Ayla darted forward, her blade carving bright arcs through the downpour. “Stay down!” she shouted.“Working on it!” Spike yelled back. A blast hit the metal beside his head, sizzling through the rain. “What the hell are these guys?”“Relic Guild enforcers,” Ayla replied, vaulting over a burning hood. “And they don’t miss twice.”One of the armored men advanced, firing again. Ayla vanished, literally flickered out of sight, and reappeared behind him.Her blade punched clean through his chestplate, blue light bursting outward. The body collapsed, armor steaming. Spike gaped. “You, teleport?”“Phase-step,” she said, wiping the blade. “Short range.”Another soldier raised his weapon. “Target locked!”Ayla grabbed Spike’s arm and yanked him upright. “Move!”They sprinted toward the tree line. Rounds of arcane energy exploded aro

Spike tried to pull the light back, to bury it the way Ayla had taught him, but it wouldn’t obey. The relic pulsed harder, a living drum inside his chest. “Stop,” he whispered. “You’re hurting her. You’re hurting me.”The Warden hissed and drew closer, pressing its snout against his shoulder like an animal seeking warmth. Energy spilled between them, thin threads of blue connecting scale to skin.Ayla’s eyes widened. “Spike, look at me! You have to sever it before it locks in!”“How?”“Think of something that isn’t the relic, something that’s yours. Anchor yourself.”He clenched his fists. Mine? He thought of the ambulance wreck, of the dying man he had dragged back from nothing.Of the horror when that man’s eyes had glowed blue. Of the promise he’d made to never let that happen again. “Mine,” he growled, forcing the word through his teeth.The pulse stuttered. Ayla stepped closer, voice low. “Good. Keep pushing. Don’t let it think for you.”Spike’s knees hit the mud. “It’s, stronger

Spike woke to sunlight, real sunlight, warm and golden. Birds sang somewhere overhead. For a blissful moment he thought the nightmare was over. Then he saw the sky.It wasn’t blue. It was fractured, like glass reflecting hundreds of different scenes at once: the wrecked ambulance, a hospital corridor, the forest, the endless void.Each shard moved slightly, showing pieces of his past looping over and over. He sat up fast. “No. No, no, no.”Ayla stirred beside him, blinking in the light. “Where… are we?”“I don’t know,” he said, standing shakily. The ground beneath him shimmered like water but felt solid. “But I think it’s mine.”Ayla frowned. “Your world?”“My head,” he said quietly. “We’re inside my head.”She looked around. The landscape stretched endlessly, hills made of metallic glass, trees shaped from memories. One of them bore photographs instead of leaves, swaying in an invisible wind.Ayla plucked one. The image showed Spike as a child, bandaged knee, holding a tiny lizard in

Ayla hit the ground hard. The impact sent a shock through her arm, but she forced herself up before the dust settled.The world around her was breaking apart. Fragments of glass sky fell like rain, shattering silently before they touched the ground.Rivers of light cut through the darkness, flowing upward instead of down. Spike was gone, swallowed by the voice that had taken his shape.“Spike!” she shouted. Her voice was lost in the storm of whispers. “Spike, answer me!”Only echoes answered, warped and hollow. “He’s gone…”“He chose us…”“You can’t save him…”Ayla gritted her teeth. “Watch me.”She pushed forward through the fractured terrain, her boots clanging against shifting shards of mirrored stone. Every reflection she passed flickered with Spike’s face, smiling, crying, screaming. She ignored them all.“Not real,” she muttered. “Not him.”The world pulsed again. A fissure tore open ahead of her, revealing a chasm filled with white fire. From within, shapes moved, shadow creatu