Wind roared.
Aera's body tumbled through a tunnel of fractured light, colors bending and folding like a universe being crumpled into paper. Lian's hand was locked with hers, knuckles white, grip unbreakable even as reality shattered around them.
"Hold on!" he shouted, voice ripped thin by the howling void.
She tried to reply, but the wind stole every word and flung it into oblivion.
The falling didn't feel like falling. It felt like being threaded between worlds, pulled through the eye of a needle made of fractured space. Shards of the broken Rift whirled past them, fragments of memories, illusions, futures that were not theirs.
One fragment sliced close.Aera glimpsed an image — her, standing alone on a ruined plain, no Lian in sight.
Her chest constricted.
Another shard spun by — Lian reaching for her through a collapsing horizon, agony in his eyes.
Aera squeezed his hand harder.
"Lian!"
This time her voice made it through. Barely.
His reply came strained. "I'm here."
But the pressure between worlds thickened, trying to pry them apart. Their linked hands vibrated violently, as if their connection itself were being tested.
The tunnel brightened.
Too bright.
Aera's eyes seared. She forced them open through sheer stubbornness.
Ahead lay a glowing fissure — an exit, maybe — but it shifted shape, flickering erratically like a broken heartbeat.
Lian swore under his breath. "The portal's unstable."
Before Aera could react, something slammed into them from behind. A pulse of energy, dark and mean, like the Rift's dying spite given form.
It hit Lian first.
His body jerked.
His hand slipped.
Aera screamed, lunging forward, fingers stretching.
Their fingertips brushed.
Slip.
Brush again.
Slip.
The vortex surged, twisting them in opposite directions, thread pulled apart by cruel hands.
"Lian!" Aera's voice cracked into raw panic.
He twisted midair, reaching for her, eyes blazing with a desperate fury she had never seen before.
"Aera… don't let go!"
The swirling void clawed at her arms, peeling her away.
Her fingers grazed his, one last fragile contact.
Then the world convulsed.
The vortex split.
And they were torn apart.
Lian's figure vanished into a streak of silver light.
Aera was hurled into the blinding fissure, swallowed by its blaze before she could even scream his name again.
Then everything went silent.
Pitch-black.
Weightless.
Her consciousness dissolved like a candle in deep water.
She didn't feel herself land.
She only felt cold.
Deep, terrible cold.