The golden doorway swallowed them whole. For a heartbeat there was nothing—no sound, no light, no sensation. Then their feet touched stone again, and they staggered forward into a place unlike any they had seen before.
The labyrinth had been confusing. This realm was impossible.
A Shattered Horizon
They stood on a narrow causeway suspended over a vast abyss. Above them stretched a fractured sky—jagged shards of color and storm, shifting like broken glass suspended in endless night. Fragments of worlds hung in the air: pieces of cities, forests, mountains, all colliding and twisting as though some mad god had shattered reality and glued it together wrong.
A tower floated sideways in the distance, its windows burning with eerie fire. Rivers ran upward into the sky, pouring into black voids that devoured them whole. Bridges hung disconnected, leading nowhere, their ends crumbling into dust.
Maren whispered, voice trembling: "This isn't a realm. It's a wound."
The Helm's voice echoed softly in Carlos's mind:"This is the Fractured Dominion, where broken truths take form. Few have walked it and returned. Fewer still have resisted its call."
Carlos shivered. "A wound… or a prison?"
The Road of Nothing
The causeway stretched forward, a road of black stone etched with glowing runes. Beneath it was only endless abyss, the kind of void that pulled at the soul if you stared too long.
"Don't look down," Rina muttered. She kept her eyes on the runes as they walked, but even her usual sharp confidence was frayed.
The path didn't remain steady. Segments drifted apart like floating islands. They leapt from one to the next, some wider than fields, others barely wide enough for a single step.
Each time they crossed, Carlos felt the pull of the abyss—like invisible hands grasping his ankles, whispering for him to let go.
And sometimes, he swore he saw faces in the void, reaching up with empty eyes.
Whispers of Broken Worlds
As they traveled deeper, fragments of other places drifted near.
An entire street floated past them, cobblestones intact, lamps flickering though there was no source of power. Shadows moved in the windows, families frozen mid-motion as though trapped in memory.
Then a forest fragment swung near, trees bent at impossible angles, their leaves whispering in voices too soft to understand.
Lys reached toward one branch as it brushed the causeway—but the leaves screamed, sharp and shrill, and the entire fragment twisted away, vanishing into the void.
Thalor raised his shield higher. "This place isn't just broken—it's hungry."
The Watcher
They pressed on until the causeway ended at a vast platform of cracked marble. At its center stood a statue—or what looked like one at first. A towering figure cloaked in tattered stone, its face hidden beneath a shattered helm.
Then it moved.
The statue's head tilted, stone crumbling from its body as it straightened to its full, impossible height. Eyes of pure white fire blazed from beneath the helm. Its voice was a grinding avalanche:
"Wanderers in the Dominion. Fragments of truth made flesh. You do not belong."
The heroes tensed, weapons raised.
Carlos shouted back, though his voice quavered against the enormity of the being: "We seek only passage. Let us through."
The Watcher's laugh cracked the marble beneath their feet. "Passage is given only to those who prove their reality. Otherwise…" It raised a hand, claws of shattered stone curling like blades. "You will be unmade."
The platform trembled, mirrors rising from the cracks around them, each one showing twisted flashes of their journey—failures, fears, betrayals. The images bled into the air, forming half-born shapes that began to stalk toward them.
Carlos gritted his teeth, blade raised. "Then we prove it."
The battle for survival in the Fractured Dominion had begun.