The sky tore like tissue under a blade.
At first, a thin crack appeared in the pale dome above them, so small it was barely noticeable. Then it spread, splitting wider with a grinding noise, like stone scraping against bone. From that fracture, light poured out—blinding, too sharp and too pure to feel real.
The courtyard beneath their feet vanished, swallowed by the same burning brilliance. Walls, shadows, even the sense of shape and space unraveled until there was nothing left but the radiance itself.
They drifted within it, weightless, as if the world had been stripped away. There was no ground to stand on, no sky to look up at, no edge to cling to—only an endless wash of shifting light, like a sky without beginning or end, slowly churning all around them.
Mika recoiled, palms held up to the glare. "Where… where on earth is this?"
