The Veil screamed.
It wasn’t a sound—it was a pressure. A folding of reality that made Jace's bones ache and Quinn's lungs burn as if they’d breathed in the fire of creation. The very forest warped around them, trees curling inward, grass disintegrating to ash. The sky pulsed with inverted light—black where it should be bright, gold where it should be night.
And Rowan...
Rowan hovered in midair, no longer a boy. No longer just a vessel. The glowing threads that had burst from his chest now coiled like living veins of lightning around him, encasing him in a chrysalis of flickering light. His hair floated upward, touched by something divine. His eyes were not open, not closed—they were fractured, half his own gold, half the hollow obsidian of the shadow-self that stood behind him.
Quinn
