There was no falling.
No sky.
No ground.
Just absence.
Not darkness—darkness implied a place for light to fail. This was something else entirely. A vast, soundless in-between where even echoes forgot how to return.
I drifted.
Weightless.
Endless.
And for the first time since the Solstice, I could not feel the bond at all.
“Kael,” I whispered instinctively.
My voice vanished the moment it left me, devoured by the Fold like breath into deep water.
Panic rose sharp and fast.
Not slow fear.
Not dread.
Loss.
The kind that hollowed you from the inside out.
The shadow stirred.
Not beside me.
Around me.
Everywhere at once.
You crossed the seam, it said, its voice no longer confined to my bones but woven into the very nothingness of this place. Between dominions. Between permiss
