Ian stood alone.
The shard pulsed in his hand. Waiting. Offering.
He stared at it for a long moment.
Then let it fall.
"I didn't come here to make allies," he whispered.
And he walked forward.
Step by step, toward the Gate.
The ground fractured beneath him. Reality rippled. Heat and cold surged through him, then nothing.
Then everything.
And the Gate of hell opened to meet him.
———
It began with silence.
No fanfare. No thunder.
No divine light to part the clouds.
Only the cold absence of being — a hollow, perfect stillness that wrapped around Ian Night the moment he stepped through the obsidian line of the Blackfall Gate.
There was no ground beneath his feet. No air to breathe.
No sky above or earth below. Even the beat of his heart felt stolen.
Time seemed to pause, not in dramatic flourish, but in utter disinterest. He drifted in that void — not falling, not flying — just suspended in a place that existed between realities.
Then came sensation.
