The colour-soaked space around him began to unravel entirely, the Guardian's presence fading with it, and Rohan felt himself pulled backward with a violent, disorienting force that echoed the same unweaving sensation of his initial crossing, now reversed, hurling him back toward the world he'd only just begun to leave behind.
Rohan came back to himself sprawled hard against the laboratory's platform, gasping, every nerve in his body screaming with an ache that felt less like physical injury and more like the aftermath of having been fundamentally, if temporarily, taken apart and hastily reassembled.
"Rohan!" Dr. Farr's voice cut through the ringing disorientation, her hands gripping his shoulders, steadying him as he struggled to sit upright. "Rohan, can you hear me? You're back — the fracture's stability spiked violently about thirty seconds after you crossed, and then you were simply there again, on the platform, as though you'd never left at all."
