The golden void didn't carry them; it spat them out.
Zoran hit the ground hard. The air left his lungs. He gasped, expecting the smell of smoke and blood, but there was nothing. Absolute, terrifying silence. He scrambled up. They were on a vast plateau of fractured violet crystal. The sky was a perpetual twilight, bruised purple and crossed by slow-moving ribbons of sapphire light. The gravity here felt wrong—heavy, pressing down on his skin like a physical weight.
"Mother?" Zoran crawled toward the heap of silk nearby.
Queen Eliana lay on the crystal, her skin pale, her breathing shallow. Vorn was already kneeling beside her, his obsidian armor smoking faintly from the transition.
"She is alive," Vorn said, though his voice sounded too loud in the stillness.
"But the strain... this realm rejects mortals."
Vorn stood up. He looked different. The King's Stone fused to his gauntlet pulsed with a chaotic, green rhythm, warring with the magic Lyra had forced into it. He looked at the horizon, where massive golden ruins jutted out of the crystal plains like the bones of a dead god.
"Aethalium," Zoran whispered, the name rising from his lessons. "The abandoned kingdom." It was believed that the people of Aethalium were made of divinity and gold, proud and powerful people said to rival even gods, with potential that was not of this world. Others believed they were the Goddess's divine army, made and trained to protect the gods' domain. In the history of Solmir, it's said that even their destruction was felt around the cosmic plain, both divine and mortal.
Vorn gave a grim sign. "It's a pity how a great civilization was destroyed to nothing."
Grrr-thrum.
A sound vibrated through the soles of Zoran's boots, an unsettling, liquid shudder. It wasn't an earthquake. It was a growl. Vorn's shield snapped up, an instant bloom of polished steel.
"We are not alone," Vorn said, his eyes scanning the twilight. "Something is hunting."
Zoran looked at his small, trembling hands. He had no weapon. He had no father. He had only a dying mother and a single knight in a world made of monsters.
Vorn scooped up the Queen with a terrifying speed, cradling her as if she weighed nothing.
"Move, Prince. If we stay here, we die."
The growl intensified, becoming a ripping sound as a shape detached itself from the gloom. It wasn't just a beast; it was a blur of shadows and sharp, luminous edges. It was the size of a mountain wolf, but impossibly lean, its hide the color of deep twilight, laced with faint, electric blue veins.
This was no earthly creature. The energy of this divine realm had twisted it—its movements were too fluid, its eyes glowing with the same sapphire light that crossed the poisoned sky. It was a Phantasm-Prowler, a creature of speed and silence, and it was closing the distance in three terrifying bounds.
"Run!" Vorn shoved Zoran forward.
Zoran didn't hesitate. His feet pounded on the fractured crystal, each step jarring his teeth. He ran parallel to Vorn, whose armor-clad steps sounded like distant hammers. The King's Stone on Vorn's gauntlet flared, throwing off chaotic sparks that did little to ward off the oppressive sense of pursuit.
They had been running for less than thirty seconds when the Prowler struck. It didn't leap; it stretched, covering the last twenty yards in a motion that defied physics. Its claws scraped the crystal where Zoran had just stood, the sound an earsplitting screeeee-k.
"Keep moving!" Vorn roared. He twisted, his shield slamming into the beast's flank as it recovered. The impact should have shattered the creature's ribs, but the Prowler didn't even stumble. It simply drained the energy, its blue veins flaring brighter.
"It feeds on impact!" Vorn realized. "It's energized by magic and momentum!"
The knight couldn't fight it directly without draining himself, not while carrying the Queen. He needed a sanctuary.
"The ruins!" Vorn pointed with his chin toward a massive, broken archway half-buried in the crystal dust, perhaps a quarter-mile away. Its gold metal was tarnished but still recognizable as an immense work of ancient civilization.
The Prowler gave a low, rumbling cry of triumph, sensing the exhaustion of its prey. It paced them, its movements too fast for Zoran's eye to follow, like watching liquid shadow flow over stone.
Zoran stumbled. He caught himself on his hands, his breath ragged. He looked back. The Prowler was closing in, its teeth—long, curved needles—gleaming.