The world didn’t just go dark; it went silent—a heavy, pressurized silence that felt like being submerged miles beneath the ocean. The skeletal hands around my ankles were like iron shackles, their touch leaching the very warmth from my blood. I clawed at the air, my scream dying in my throat as the shimmering portal to the living world shrank to a pinprick of silver, then vanished entirely.
I was no longer in the Shadow Realm. I was deeper.
I hit a floor of grey ash with a force that should have broken my ribs. Instead, I felt a strange, hollow thud, as if my body were losing its density. I scrambled backward, my hands sinking into the fine, soot-like dust.
Above me, the sky wasn't purple or red. It was a flat, featureless white, casting no light and no shadows. And standing in a semi-
