The sky tore open without warning.
Not with lightning, not with fire—but with absence, a vertical wound where reality simply forgot to exist.
Anna felt it before she saw it.
Her magic recoiled like an animal recognizing a predator it had once escaped.
People screamed. The city’s wards failed in sequence, one after another, like a prayer unraveling syllable by syllable. Stone rippled. Time stuttered.
Shen Qiyang shouted something she didn’t hear.
Because the wound spoke.
Not aloud.
Inside her.
You were never meant to refuse.
The voice was neither male nor female. Neither cruel nor kind. It carried no emotion at all—which terrified her more than rage ever could.
Anna stepped forward instinctively.
“No,” she said, grounding the word with everything she was. “I already chose.”
The
