Chapter Title: What Should Not Cross
The darkness did not remain still.
It stretched.
It listened.
And then it began to answer.
Azrael stood firm in the shifting space, his grip on Quinn steady despite the tremor running through his arms. The ground beneath him pulsed again, but this time it wasn’t searching.
It was opening.
Not like before.
Not sudden.
Not uncontrolled.
Deliberate.
The space above him twisted, not into a sky, not into anything familiar, but into something that resembled a surface seen from below. A thin boundary. A layer separating this place from something else.
And that layer—
Was weakening.
“…Yeah,” Azrael muttered.
“That doesn’t look good.”
Quinn’s voice came immediately.
“This is not an isolated space anymore.”
Azrael narrowed his eyes.
“…It’s conn
