Light wasn’t light but It was a collision.A force that slammed through Tom and Snowly like a meteor hurling them out of the vortex and into the real world with bone-cracking violence.They hit asphalt very hard.Tom rolled across the street, sparks scraping off his jacket, lungs seizing as he tumbled to a stop beside a dented trash bin.Snowly smacked into a parked car and slid down the bumper.Silence,Then Snowly wheezed, “ten out of ten would NEVER do that again”Tom groaned and forced himself onto his elbows because they were back in Silverdale to a night Cold with streetlights flickering to the distant hum of the city.It lasted only a second. Then Tom’s vision flickered. A HUD slammed into place: “TIME REMAINING: 00:38:22”“REALITY THREADING: UNSTABLE”“CRITICAL WARNING: POWER LEAK”Tom’s chest tightened.“Power leak?”Snowly’s ears shot up.“That sounds like the kind of problem that ends with the words ‘everyone vaporized.’”Before Tom could respondA shockwave rippled outward from

Time didn’t slow but it stopped with bullets frozen mid flight each one suspended inches from Tom’s skull, humming with lethal momentum. The wind halted, Dust hung in the air like glitter trapped in glass.Snowly’s scream cut off mid syllable as The world turned silent, Still and Dead Only one thing moved “Aelor.”He walked forward through the suspended gunfire, his cloak trailing threads that rippled like fragments of stars. His expression calm, sorrowed, inevitably never shifted as he raised a single hand.With a soft gesture Every bullet vanished.Unwoven into nothing.Snowly blinked speech resuming as time lurched forward but the bullets were gone. The operatives stumbled in confusion, checking weapons, shouting orders, unaware how close they’d come to executing the universe’s biggest mistake.Tom stared, breath shuddering. “Aelor?”Aelor’s voice was quiet but heavy and final.“You have crossed a threshold you were not meant to cross.”Snowly pushed forward, trembling with fury.“WHE

Like there was nothing , no pain or breath and Nobody was anywhere,Just a vast suffocating black thick as tar, endless as space and Tom floated in it like a dead thought with no heartbeat or voice,No Snowly for real this time and for a moment maybe a second, Maybe a century, he wondered if this was death but then a tiny whisper thin and far echoing through the void.“Tom”His eyes snapped open except he didn’t have eyes here. Only awareness. A shape of consciousness.“Snowly?”Silence followed but then another voice spoke cold, metallic and threaded with power. “Host disengaged. Core transfer incomplete.”Tom froze “ Incomplete, how?”He tried to move but nothing. Tried to speak only thought. “Where am I?”The voice answered without emotion: “You are inside the Null Lattice the space between collapse and creation.”Tom’s pulse if he still had one seemed to return as a faint echo.“Did, did Snowly survive?”Static Then: “Stability unknown. The target entity experienced overload durin

The explosion wasn’t sound because It was pressure, a crushing shockwave that hurled Tom backward like a ragdoll as the ground vanished beneath him and the air vanished around him. The world became a blur of red light and screaming static.He hit the surface hard, so he rolled, skidded, choked and finally came to a stop.His ears rang and His vision swam. And when the haze cleared, she was standing there. “Snowly.”But not Snowly, Her fur once white as moonlight was now streaked with crimson threads, pulsing under her skin like veins of molten fire. Her eyes glowed an unnatural red, fractured like broken glass. Her paws were no longer paws; they were claws, long and hooked, scraping the glassy ground with a metallic hiss She wasn’t a dog anymore but a host as Tom staggered to his feet, breath shuddering. “Snowly, it’s me.”Her head twitched too fast, too sharp like a glitch in reality. When she spoke, two voices overlapped: One trembling and the other one triumphant.“Tom please run.

Tom slammed back into reality with a gasp of cold air flooding his lungs like he’d been drowning. His vision flickered white, then dark, then stabilized.He was lying on a stone, No Glass A smooth white surface stretching endlessly in all directions. A place that wasn’t a place.The system space. Except not his. A voice echoed around him, calm and impossibly vast: “HOST STABILIZED.”Tom pushed himself to his feet. His breath came out misty.“Where am I?”The voice answered: "SNOWLY'S INNER REALM.”Tom stiffened. “Snowly? Where is she?”Silence.Then “SEARCHING.”A pulse of light rippled across the empty horizon like a sonar wave. Tom swallowed, heart racing, fists trembling.He spun as a shape began forming behind him threads of white light weaving together until a doorway appeared. A tall, arched structure made of shimmering spirit silk. A door. The voice spoke again: “WARNING: HOST SNOWLY’S CORE IS COLLAPSING.”Tom’s breath caught. His chest tightened painfully. “Show me where she is