What Answered the Fracture
The sky did not tear.
It peeled.
Layer by layer, reality pulled itself apart like skin from bone, revealing something vast and endless beyond the torn veil. The abyss recoiled, its chaotic currents flattening as though pressed beneath an overwhelming presence.
Aria felt it instantly.
Not as pain.
As recognition.
Her breath caught, light flickering wildly along her veins as the boundary she had become strained to its limit.
“It noticed,” she whispered.
Ridge lay half-cradled in her arms, blood soaking through her fingers, glowing faintly with the same strange light that now wrapped around him like a dying star. His breaths were shallow, uneven—each one a battle.
The Guardian turned slowly toward the widening tear.
For the first time since its arrival, f
