The transition from the physical world of the Citadel to the Void was not a fall in the traditional sense; it was a total dissolution of reality. One moment, the air had been thick with the suffocating scent of Gwen's solar fire, the smell of burnt ozone, and the vibrating tension of the grand atrium. The next, there was only the soundless, crushing pressure of a vacuum—a place where gravity was a suggestion and light was a memory.
Lucien felt the gravity of the rift tearing at his very atoms. As he tumbled into the purple-black maw, the violet light of his own shadow-magic was being inhaled by the darkness, stripped away from his skin until he was nothing but a naked consciousness suspended in a cold, eternal scream. He was prepared for the end—to be unmade in the silence between dimensions, his essence scattered into the nothingness.
Then, the darkness broke with a violent, silver shriek.
