The return through the Veil was violent.
Avery stumbled as the world reassembled around her, the air thick with the acrid tang of ozone. The transition from chaos to stillness was jarring — like being ripped out of a storm and dropped into silence.
They stood in the reaper stronghold’s arrival hall — a cavernous chamber of black stone laced with silver veins that pulsed faintly with the energy of the Veil. The strike team appeared one by one, battered, bloodied, and breathless.
Liora fell to one knee, clutching her ribs. Corren leaned heavily on his weapon, his armor cracked from shoulder to hip. Even Kael’s posture, usually impossibly composed, was off — his scythe flickering in and out of existence as the weapon’s energy struggled to stabilize.
Avery’s knees gave out beneath her. She
