Selena’s breath strangled in her throat as the figure stepped through the vortex.
Her own voice—cold, distant, eerily familiar—echoed in her mind. The same cadence, the same tone, yet laced with something foreign. Something ancient.
Damian’s grip on her arm tightened. “Selena—”
“I see it,” she whispered. But she couldn’t move.
The ruins groaned beneath them, stone shattering like glass as the force of the abyss warped reality itself. The sky above churned, stars flickering in and out of existence. Whatever had stepped through the vortex—whoever it was—was no mere illusion.
It was her.
Or at least, something wearing her face.
The figure emerged fully from the rift, black fire coiling around its form. It was taller than her, impossibly so, its body wrapped in layers of shifting darkne
