The altered‑reality barrier lasted forty‑three seconds.
Not because Alex closed it — because holding it with F7 while the other four Fragments responded to active combat was like trying to close a window with one hand while holding an increasing weight with the other. F7 needed focused attention. The other four needed focused attention. There was only one mind to distribute that attention.
At second forty‑three, F1 pushed to thirty‑two percent without Alex asking, and the barrier destabilized at its edge — the altered state of space giving way at the point where F1's channel interrupted F7's concentration.
The angel saw it.
And pushed.
---
The angel's wounded arm — the right one, with Seraph's third cut and the deep wound Grim had left from the plane between life and death — passed through the barrier's destabilized edge.
Not without cost.
