The moment the world heaved beneath her—when the sky cracked like bone and the ground folded itself into a spiraling corridor of light—Elaria did not fall.

She was pulled.

Dragged as if by a hand she could not see, a will older than memory, older than the Veil, older even than the gods who shaped it. Her fingers clawed at the collapsing air, finding nothing. Her body dissolved into ribbons of sensation—heat, cold, grief, the echo of Kael’s last breath, the shudder of Draven’s ...