The world swallowed her whole.
Stone, light, and dust blurred around Lyra as the temple floor gave way beneath her feet. Her scream tore from her throat, but the sound was lost to the roar of collapsing stone. Cold air rushed past her skin like knives. For a heartbeat, she thought she would never stop falling.
Then—impact.
The ground rose up to meet her, brutal and unrelenting. Pain shot through her body as she hit the earth, the air ripped from her lungs. She lay gasping, her body a map of aches and bruises, ears ringing with the echo of her own fall.
The temple above groaned, stone splitting, but by some miracle the rubble missed her. When she finally forced her eyes open, all she saw was black forest canopy above and fractured moonlight spilling through the branches.
She wasn’t in
