The sky did not shatter all at once.
It peeled open in silence, a wound stretching wider, light bleeding through like veins of fire. The air thickened, heavy with static, every breath tasting of iron and ash.
Arlen braced himself against the trembling ground. "Stay close," he said, though his voice was swallowed by the low rumble rising beneath them.
Rowan's eyes darted upward, wide and unblinking. "It's… multiplying."
The cracks branched outward, splitting into jagged lines that webbed across the heavens. Each pulse sent a ripple through the earth, as if the world itself recoiled.
Mira's hand tightened on Arlen's arm. "This isn't just the fracture. It's something else. Something deeper."
Lysa stood rigid, her face pale, her lips moving soundlessly before the words finally broke free. "It's the Realm. It's forcing its way through."
The light above them flared, and for a heartbeat the sky was no longer sky at all — it was a mirror. Shadows pressed against it from the other side, shapes too vast and indistinct to name. They shifted like smoke, like memory, like hunger given form.
Arlen felt the weight of their gaze, cold and deliberate, the same presence he had sensed in Lysa's Echo. His ribs ached with the memory of it. "They're watching us."
"No," Lysa whispered. "They're waiting."
The ground split nearby, a jagged fissure tearing through stone and soil. From its depths rose a sound — not a roar, not a scream, but something older, something that carried the weight of centuries. It was the sound of a door opening.
Rowan stumbled back, panic flashing across his face. "We can't fight that. We can't—"
Mira cut him off, her voice sharp. "Then we don't fight. We endure."
Arlen turned to Lysa, who stood trembling, her arms wrapped tight around herself. "You said it waits for you. Then this… this is about you. What does it want?"
Her eyes glistened, but she didn't look at him. She looked at the widening cracks above, at the shadows pressing closer. "It wants me to break. To give in. To open the way completely."
"And if you don't?" Mira asked.
Lysa's laugh was hollow, broken. "Then it takes everything else instead."
The fissure at their feet widened, light spilling upward in jagged bursts. The hum of the fracture behind them grew louder, resonating with the sky's tearing, as if both wounds were answering each other. The world was caught between two hungers.
Arlen stepped forward, his voice steady despite the chaos. "Then we don't let it. You're not alone, Lysa. Whatever this is, whatever it wants — we face it together."
Her gaze snapped to him, furious and terrified all at once. "You don't understand. If I break, it doesn't just take me. It takes everything."The sky flared again, brighter, harsher. The shadows pressed closer, their forms sharpening into something almost human, almost familiar. Echoes of faces, twisted and hollow, stared down at them.
Rowan's voice cracked. "They look like us."
Mira's breath caught. "No. They look like what we could become."
The tremor deepened, shaking the ground beneath their feet. Arlen reached for Lysa's hand, but she pulled back, shaking her head violently. "Don't. If you touch me now, it'll take you too."
The silence that followed was suffocating. The sky pulsed once more, and the cracks spread like wildfire. The world seemed to hold itself together by sheer will — and that will was fraying.
Arlen swallowed hard, his voice low. "Then tell us how to stop it."
Lysa's answer was a whisper, barely audible over the rumble. "You can't."
The horizon split open. Light poured through, blinding, merciless. And from within it, the shadow stepped forward — no longer waiting, no longer hidden. It had found her.
And this time, it was coming through.