The ground was rising.
Not crumbling. Not exploding.
Rising — like the world itself had decided to stand up.
Walliam couldn't breathe.
Stone, roots, and chunks of earth tore free from the forest floor and drifted upward in slow, terrible grace, pulled toward the widening fracture in the sky. Dust spiraled around him in glittering columns.
The crystal under his shirt burned like a second sun.
"Walliam!"
Mara's voice sounded distant, stretched thin by the pressure in the air.
The Collectors remained kneeling, coats fluttering upward in the reverse wind, heads bowed to the vast shape forming beyond the sky-tear.
That presence.
It wasn't fully visible — more suggestion than form. A crown silhouette made of distant stars. A curve of something too large to belong to the world.
Walliam felt it like gravity inside his bones.
A call older than memory.
Come back.
The words weren't spoken. They existed the way hunger existed.
His feet left the ground.
Only an inch.
But enough.
Lysa grabbed his arm. "No—don't—!"
The instant she touched him, a jolt of light sparked between them. She cried out but didn't let go.
Mara slammed the butt of her staff into the earth. Golden sigils burst outward in a ring, anchoring the space around them. The floating stones nearby shuddered and dropped back to the ground.
But Walliam still felt the pull.
"It's syncing," Mara gasped. "His shard and the fracture—they're resonating!"
"I don't know what that means!" Lysa shouted.
"It means," Mara said, eyes never leaving Walliam, "the sky thinks he belongs to it."
Another beam of pale light shot down from the fracture, striking the far side of the village. A house lifted whole from the earth, wood creaking as it rose, turning slowly in the air.
Screams filled the night.
The Collectors rose as one.
"The Gate opens," their leader said softly. "The Heart stirs."
Walliam's vision blurred. The world doubled. He could see the village — and layered over it, another version, older. Stone towers where houses stood. Bridges of crystal. People shaped of light moving through the air.
A memory.
Not his.
The crystal pulsed.
He saw a vast structure in the sky — not built, but grown. A core of impossible light. Fractures racing across it.
A voice — many voices — crying out.
Lonely.
Then—
Pain speared through his chest.
Walliam fell back to the ground, gasping.
The pull lessened for a moment.
Mara seized it. "Move! All of you, to the south ridge! The old stone line — it still holds!"
Villagers ran, ducking falling debris. The fracture overhead continued to widen, jagged lines branching like lightning frozen in glass.
A Collector stepped into their path.
Walliam saw it before anyone else — a distortion in the air, a cold absence.
"Left!" he shouted.
They scattered just as a wave of shadow tore through the spot where they'd been.
The Collector turned toward Walliam.
Recognition burned in its pale eyes.
"You are the axis," it said.
"I'm just a person!" Walliam yelled back, though he wasn't sure anymore.
It lifted a hand.
The air warped.
Before it could strike, Mara's blade flashed, carving a sigil through the night. The symbol slammed into the Collector, pinning it briefly to the ground like an insect.
"Run!" she snapped.
They reached the old stone line — a ring of weathered pillars half-sunk into earth, remnants of something older than the village.
Mara slammed her staff down again. Light raced between the pillars, forming a dome that hummed like struck glass.
Floating debris bounced off the barrier.
For a second, there was stillness inside.
Outside, the world lifted piece by piece.
Lysa stared upward, tears streaking her face. "Is this the end?"
Mara's jaw tightened. "No. This is the beginning of something that should have stayed buried."
Walliam knelt, clutching his chest.
The crystal was no longer just warm.
It was awake.
He could feel currents moving through it — threads stretching upward into the sky, connecting to that vast presence beyond the fracture.
"Why me?" he whispered.
And for the first time—
Something answered.
Not words.
Feeling.
Because you were empty enough to hold me.
Walliam's breath hitched.
"I'm not empty," he said aloud, almost angry.
The presence pulsed — curious.
Then another sensation followed.
Sorrow.
So old it made his chest ache.
Above them, the fracture split wider still. Through it, stars could be seen that didn't belong to any sky Walliam knew — swirling colors, distant storms of light.
Shapes moved there.
Watching.
Waiting.
Mara looked at him sharply. "What did it say?"
He met her eyes. "It's not… evil."
"That doesn't make it safe."
A thunderous crack split the air.
One of the stone pillars shattered, light flickering along the dome.
Outside the barrier, more Collectors gathered. Dozens now. All facing inward.
"They're not attacking," Lysa said.
"No," Mara agreed. "They're witnessing."
Walliam stood slowly.
The pull returned, stronger.
He stepped toward the edge of the barrier.
Mara grabbed his wrist. "If you go to it now, you won't come back."
"I'm not going to it," he said, voice shaking but steady. "It's coming here."
Another pulse ran through him.
The fracture responded — widening in answer.
The sky wasn't just broken anymore.
It was opening.
Far beyond sight, in a place where shattered light drifted like dust, the Shard King stood before a great window of crystal.
Through it, he watched the fracture bloom above the tiny village.
He smiled — not in triumph.
In relief.
"At last," he whispered.
"The Heart remembers the way home."