They landed hard, not on solid ground, but on something soft, yielding, and incredibly cold. The air, though absent, felt like a void, pressing in on them. Kael's Admin panel was completely blank, stripped of all displays, all light. He felt Lyra’s hand still clinging to his arm, trembling.
"Kael?" Lyra whispered, her voice laced with fear, lost in the echoing blackness. "Where are we? What is this place?"
Kael couldn't see her. He couldn't see anything. All he could feel was the profound, suffocating emptiness. The cold, unrendered space of Aethernia's deepest, most forgotten corners. The raw, terrifying nothingness. The last searing touch of the Eraser still burned against his phantom spine, a ghost of agony that made his digital essence thrum with instability.
He tried to speak, but
