Nobody looked away.
They couldn’t.
The wound in the sky widened another inch.
That was all.
An inch.
Yet Denise felt the world recoil.
The trees surrounding the estate bent away from it.
The clouds dissolved.
The air itself seemed unwilling to exist near the tear.
Something was wrong with the darkness beyond it.
Not empty.
Occupied.
Watching.
The thing looking back had no shape.
Not one Denise could understand.
Every time she tried to focus on it, her mind supplied something different.
An eye.
A mouth.
A doorway.
A star.
A hand.
None of them stayed.
All of them felt true.
The ancient being’s expression hardened.
For the first time since it had emerged from beneath the mansion.
“My fault,” it said quietly.
Liam immediately disagreed.
“No.”
The response came too f
