Darkness, not of the Void but older—starving—hungered closed over Elira like a wet shroud.
She didn't fall. She dropped.
Above her, the Loom broke down, Kael's form engulfed in curling sheets of time and ink. Her legs and arms flailed through the gravityless nothingness, but here there was no gravity just pull, like the rhythm of a heartbeat reversed through being.
Hands still held her. Not flesh. Not thread. Something in between.
"Elira…" A voice snarled in her ear, not Kael's—not any voice she knew. It was hers, twisted, tainted.
"What did you give up?" the voice asked. "To cure him?"
She did not answer. Could not. Her lips would not.
Instead, light exploded across the black—a red seam of lightning dividing the nothing. For a moment, she felt faces in the crevices. A thousand Eliras. A thousand endings. In one, she walked alone. In another, Kael stood as the Watcher's crown. In another, they were both ash.
A wound opened beneath her feet, wide and waiting.
