THE NAME THAT SHOULD NOT EXIST
Light roared.
Not blinding — suffocating.
It crushed, pressed, swallowed — until sensation fractured and the world spat Kael out.
He slammed onto stone.
Cold.
Breath ripped from his lungs as he rolled, coughing, vision blurring before slowly sharpening — revealing…
The ruins.
Ancient, broken, half-buried in ash.
They stood on a colossal causeway of cracked marble, ringed by fallen pillars, each one carved with sigils burned and scoured by impossible violence. Above them, the sky churned — not night, not day — a storm of fractured constellations spinning around a spiraling void.
Lyra groaned behind him.
Riven staggered upright like a predator forced into stillness.
Nara pressed a shaking palm against the ground, silver light bleeding from her finge
