The world did not simply change; it screamed.

Laken’s sacrifice was the detonation. The phoenix’s freedom was the supernova. The pocket dimension, a prison of curated nightmares, shattered not with a whimper, but with the sound of a million panes of glass exploding inwards. The psychic backlash was a physical force, a hurricane of golden fire and raw sound that hurled Laken back into the real world. She crashed onto the hard oak of Harold’s manor floor, the breath ...