The Threshold Made Flesh
Ridge did not fall.
Falling implied direction, distance, a place to land.
This was different.
He was inverting.
Reality folded inward, not around him but through him, as though existence itself had decided he was now the axis upon which everything turned. The darkness that swallowed him was not empty; it was dense with pressure, awareness, and an intelligence that did not think in words.
The Hunger Before Creation did not pursue him.
It settled.
Inside.
Ridge screamed—but no sound came. His mouth opened, his lungs burned, yet the void swallowed all expression. The concept of noise did not exist here. Neither did time. Or space. Or even pain as he understood it.
Instead, there was weight.
Infinite weight.
The lattice-core inside him convulsed violently,
