The threads burnt where they were handled.
Not fire—something deeper. It was memory set aflame, identity stretched to breaking and it felt as if glass would splinter under the strain. The pain wasn't physical, not like broken bones or cut flesh. This was worse. This was the dissolution of self, the raw agony of realizing that every beat he struck upon the lattice could strip him naked.
Kaito ground his teeth and forced himself not to let go.
The void in front of them pulsed like an unending wound that could never be closed. A tear in the lattice, its strands spilling outward in endless unwinding, spreading, stretching further every moment.
Behind it was shadow only—growing, hungry, pulsating with Dominion resonance like claws driven through the tear. The darkness itself was moving; it advanced like a wave, like a sea hungry to consume the Fork from the core.
