The fall ended in silence.
It was a void that breathed,not stone, not air. Beneath a surface that didn’t exist, silver light pulsed in time with my heartbeat, stretching in veins. I wasn’t standing. I wasn't falling. I was inside something alive.
Kalen was also there.
Or what remained of him.
His voice echoed soundlessly as he hung, suspended in the silver, his body divided between flame and shadow. My name rippled across the air, not a word but a pulse of recognition that struck like lightning against bone.
I tried to reach him. The light moved back as my hand went through it. A thousand fragments flowed in the glow, each one flashing with memory: my first shift, Thorn’s fire, the night first heard the cradle whisper. They weren’t visions. They were pieces. Of me.
A voice rolled th
