The world did not stop falling.

It simply chose a direction and dragged Elaria with it.

The hands that caught her were not gentle—they were precise, as if they knew exactly which part of her would shatter first if held too hard. She slammed into a chest that felt like stone wrapped in skin, breath knocked from her lungs, vision strobing with white and black and something else—something she had no mortal word for.

She wasn’t standing.

She was suspended.

Held in place by a force older ...