The darkness responded.
The spit Daniela threw to the ground didn't fall. It was absorbed by nothingness before it even touched the surface. As if the world had swallowed her insolence.
And then, before she could react, the ground disappeared.
It didn't crumble, it didn't collapse, it didn't shatter into pieces—it simply ceased to exist. Daniela fell. Her body plummeted in freefall, swallowed by a formless void. The wind didn't follow her. There was no wind. There was no sound. There was nothing but the quickening of her stomach, her body's warning that she was falling, even without any sense of where she was going.
She didn't scream.
Daniela wasn't one to scream.
But the hand holding the sword clenched until the muscles in her arm vibrated.
And suddenly, the fall ended.
Not with impact.
Not with pain.
But with an absence so absolute it felt worse than any collision.
