Light flooded the void. Then came the sound of wind — sharp, cutting, alive.
Kael gasped as his body slammed back into reality. His boots struck solid ground, and he fell to one knee, breath ragged. The air around him shimmered like fractured glass, reality trying to stitch itself together.
He was no longer in the Citadel.
Instead, he stood in the middle of a wasteland — the sky cracked open, bleeding light and shadow at once. Mountains floated in the distance, torn from their roots, suspended like shattered fragments of a broken world.
The Core’s explosion had rewritten everything.
Lira’s voice broke through the haze. “Kael!”
He turned sharply. She was running toward him, bruised but alive, her blade drawn. The ground behind her was scorched, the remnants of divine architecture diss
