The world did not return gently.

It slammed back around her like a door torn off its hinges, light snapping into bone, breath into fire, memory into a blade. Elaria reeled—no ground beneath her, no sky above her—just the aftershock of the last thing she’d seen:

Kael’s hand slipping from hers.

Draven’s voice splitting into two.

Rhovan’s shadow smiling like someone who’d already written the ending.

And then—

The world fractured.

Now she was inside the crack.

Not falling.

Not ...