It happened in the high mountains, far from any city or settlement, in a place where the air was thin and the peaks touched the sky like fingers reaching for the divine. Selena and Dante had been tracking the killing storms for weeks, following a trail of devastation through remote villages, trying to understand the source of the supernatural weather that had been terrorizing the mountain kingdoms for months.
They had found it three days ago—a rift in the fabric of reality, similar to the tear that had released the Hollow but smaller, more focused. Through it, elemental chaos poured into the world, raw storm energy with no consciousness to guide it, no purpose except destruction. It had taken Selena and Dante two days of constant work to seal it, weaving phoenix fire and controlled lightning into a new barrier, cauterizing the wound in reality with power that left them both exhausted.
