The black mass rising from Ronan’s shadow didn't have a face, but it had a hunger. It stretched upward, a jagged silhouette of oily smoke that seemed to drink the very light from the clearing."Move! Now!" Vaisha screamed, her spear erupting into a brilliant, searing white glow.She didn't aim for Ronan. She thrust the weapon directly into the patch of ground where his shadow met his heels. There was a sound like glass shattering against iron, followed by a hiss of steam. The shadow-thing recoiled, dissolving back into the dirt with a guttural, non-human shriek."What the hell was that?" Ronan yelled, scrambling backward on his hands and knees. "Was that me? Did I just do that?""Keep your mouth shut if you want to keep your soul!" Aris barked, slamming a heavy, cold metal collar around Ronan’s neck before he could even stand.The world went blurry. A sharp blow to the back of his head sent Ronan into a spiraling darkness, the last thing he heard being the frantic, rhythmic pulsing of

The static on the radio died into a haunting hum, leaving the final warning hanging in the cold night air: “You are not alone.”Ronan stared at the dark screen of the device, his thumb hovering over the power button. He could feel the eyes of every soldier on the rampart boring into his back."Okay," Ronan said, his voice cracking slightly. "That was ominous. Even for a ghost-radio from the future. Anyone else feel like we’re being watched, or is that just my concussion talking?"Vaisha didn't look away from the tree line. She gripped her spear so hard her knuckles turned the color of the moon. "Marius, take the men. Double the patrols on the inner wall. I don't care if the Skitter-beasts retreated; I want every inch of this rock covered in Shard-light.""And the prisoner?" Marius asked, his voice low and dangerous.Vaisha finally turned to Ronan. She looked him up and down—the dirt-streaked flight suit, the strange boots, and the glowing radio. "He’s not a prisoner anymore. Not exact

The white light didn't burn; it hummed. It was a cold, clinical brilliance that stripped the color from the courtyard, turning the stone walls and the terrified faces of the soldiers into a flat, overexposed photograph. Ronan felt the air being sucked out of his lungs as if he’d been ejected into the stratosphere without an oxygen mask.The radio in his hand vibrated so violently he thought the casing would melt into his palm."Ronan! Get back!" Vaisha’s voice sounded miles away, muffled by the roar of the atmospheric tear.Then, as quickly as it had arrived, the light collapsed. It didn't fade; it imploded into a single, microscopic point of blue energy before vanishing entirely. The courtyard was plunged back into the dim violet haze of the Aethelgard night. Ronan hit the flagstones hard, his knees buckling."Check the perimeter! Archers, eyes on the sky!" Halvor’s roar brought the frozen soldiers back to life.Ronan gasped for air, his vision swimming with jagged spots of neon gree

The 99% mark on the radio screen didn’t just blink; it screamed.The sound of the universe tearing wasn’t a bang. It was a high-pitched, agonizing whine, like a million violin strings snapping at once. The white light from the device didn’t fade—it exploded outward, not as fire, but as a vacuum. The burning grain, the screaming traitors, and the surging shadows of the Shadow-Kin were all swallowed by a sudden, violent swirl of violet clouds and jagged, crystalline rain.The world went vertical."Ronan! Grab the rail! Grab it!" Vaisha’s voice was a jagged edge against the roar of the wind."I’m trying! I can't see my own hands!" Ronan yelled back, his fingers scrambling against stone that felt like it was vibrating out of existence.A massive bolt of violet lightning slammed into the secondary gate, throwing a shower of sparks over them. The air tasted like copper and old batteries. The "Reality Collapse" hadn't ended the world, but it had turned the Bastion into the eye of a magical h

The gravity shifted again, a nauseating lurch that dragged Ronan’s stomach into his throat. One moment, he was clinging to a slab of stone that served as a makeshift wall; the next, he was falling upward into a patch of sky that shouldn’t have been visible from within the heart of the Bastion. He crashed onto a tilted platform of rusted iron, the impact knocking the wind out of his lungs."Vaisha!" he gasped, scrambling to his feet. His balance was a casualty of the geometry. The floor beneath him was canted at a forty-five-degree angle, yet he felt as though he were standing on perfectly level ground. "Vaisha, where are you?"He looked around. The command spire, once the pride of the Bastion, was now a surrealist nightmare. Massive pillars of reinforced concrete were twisted like pretzels, and long, jagged shards of glass floated in mid-air, rotating slowly in a slow-motion dance of destruction. Through the gaps in the fractured architecture, he could see the wasteland outside—except