The Ancient Ones' corruption didn't just retreat—it writhed backward like a living thing made of nightmares and entropy, leaving trails of reality-rot in its wake. Where their influence touched, colors bled out of existence, sounds became tastes, and time hiccupped in small, nauseating loops. The air itself whimpered.
We stumbled into the packhouse like we'd outrun death itself—which, technically, we had. My legs moved on pure muscle memory while my brain tried to process the impossibility of my fifteen-year-old sons existing in the same space as the three-month-old babies I'd kissed goodbye six weeks ago. The math made my head spin, or maybe that was just the dimensional aftershock.
"Mom needs to sit," Leo observed, and hearing my baby's voice dropped two octaves sent lightning through
