While Sunny was blissfully weaving the threads of hundereds of multiverses into his soul and Allegra was beginning her century long physical metamorphosis in the God-Maker Realm, the atmosphere in the Real Void had shifted from frantic to utterly bewildered.
In the shimmering halls of Lady Sansa's palace, the aura of the Beyonder's presence had suddenly disappeared. It was as if a dark cloud had been scoured from the sky by a sudden, violent wind.
"Father, the Beyonder is gone," Sansa said, her voice steady despite the adrenaline still humming in her veins.
She looked at her father's face, which was etched with the lines of a century's worth of worry accumulated in a few hours.
She knew that while she had negotiated for a year of time, the heart of a father does not sit still. To Samson, every second his daughter's world was under siege was a second he spent imagining her ruin.
