Atlas reached it... finally, the fragment of Claire's bubble. The dreaming bubble.
He was shaking. Still trembling with the echoes of what he'd seen… what he'd barely escaped. He looked behind once more. The beast… no longer after him. No sound. No breath. No presence.
But the warning still screamed in his mind, carved into his bones:
"It said it's going to be released... Fuck. If that's so—what the fuck will happen to the world?"
He vanished. Entering her fragment.
It was already afternoon in the forest near the border, when Atlas zapped back into existence — into the real world. His knees buckled slightly, the weight of reality slamming into him.
A cold wind whispered through the hills like a mourning ghost. He took a breath — fresh, wet with rain, real — and let it burn through his lungs.
Relief. Brief. Fleeting.
