For a moment, there was no world.Only the echo of a world breaking.

Elaria fell through it — through light that wasn’t light, through shadow that wasn’t shadow, through memory stretched thin as burnt silk. The rupture swallowed her scream before it ever left her throat. Her body spun, dissolved, reformed, dissolved again. She felt her bones as chords vibrating in a song she didn’t recognize. She felt her thoughts tearing like pages ripped backwards from a book.

Then everything ...