Silence.
Not the gentle kind found in early dawns or quiet forests.
A violent silence, a vacuum where sound had been ripped from existence.
Eirena floated in it, suspended weightlessly, her body numb, her thoughts scattered like broken shards of light drifting in the void.
Then, breath returned to her lungs.
A gasp tore from her lips.
Pain lunged into her body like a collapsing star, and the world slammed back into existence.
Everything was falling.
The Sanctum, once a cathedral of cosmic harmony, had become a graveyard of shattered crystal and spiralling debris. Pillars broke apart midair, dissolving into glittering dust. Fragments of the crystalline floor spun around her like drifting constellations torn from their orbits.
Eirena plummeted downward straight toward a jagged mound
