The rupture did not stop.

It should have collapsed inward, burned itself out, or sealed the wound it tore through the world—but instead it kept opening, widening like a mouth learning how to scream for the first time. Light peeled backward into darkness, darkness peeled backward into light, and both spun into a shape that made no sense, a geometry that breathed, trembling like something alive and breaking.

And through the center of it—

Elaria fell.

Not physically. There was no falling ...