The air above the broken platform shimmered like a mirage.
Kazi stood at the edge of the ruined glass chamber, the hum of her mark now a steady thrum vibrating up through her entire body. Every fiber of her being told her to step back, to flee from the pull of the unseen thing hidden beyond the fracture.
But she stayed rooted in place.
Dakarai moved up beside her, hands clenched into fists at his sides, small arcs of electricity snapping across his knuckles. His jaw was set, his breathing shallow, as he stared at the faint tear in the air, still invisible to the eye, but heavy enough to feel pressing against the skin like a storm on the verge of breaking.
"We're really doing this, huh?" he muttered.
"We don't have a choice," Kazi said.
Behind them, Rhazir approached slowly, his boots scraping against the dusty floor. His eyes flicked once toward the shimmering platform, then back toward the runes still faintly glowing across the walls. His face was unreadable and calm.
Kazi's hand tightened on the pulse disc still clipped to her belt. Temba's voice echoed in her memory: Insurance... for when the door opens both ways.
She didn't know if it would be enough.
"Once we cross," Rhazir said, speaking to both of them, "there may not be an easy way back."
Kazi looked at him, observing his posture and the slight tension beneath his composed demeanor. A small part of her screamed that they shouldn't trust him, not fully. But without Rhazir's knowledge of these places and these scars, there would be no moving forward.
She nodded once. "Then let's not waste time."
Kazi stepped onto the cracked platform.
The hum in the air intensified immediately. Her mark flared beneath her sleeve, casting a faint amber glow through the thin fabric. The old runes on the platform responded, lighting up one by one, forming a slow, rotating spiral of energy.
As the fracture opened, the world bent inward at the platform's center, pulling light, heat and sound toward itself, until there was only a thin, trembling seam hovering a few feet above the ground. A window cut into the skin of reality itself.
Through it, Kazi saw nothing. Only swirling gray mist and the vague impression of a vast, empty space beyond.
Rhazir's voice cut through the tension. "Stay close. If the fracture starts to react, don't fight it. Move with it."
Dakarai swallowed hard. "You're full of great news today."
Kazi took a deep breath and stepped through.
The world folded around her.
For a moment, there was no up or down. No floor. No ceiling. Only motion, slow and thick like wading through a dream.
Then her boots struck solid ground. She stumbled forward and caught herself on hands and knees, the stone beneath her were rough and slick with moisture. The air here was cold and thick, carrying a faint metallic tang that filled her mouth with every breath.
The others followed moments later. Dakarai landed beside her with a grunt, his hand already crackling with blue sparks. Rhazir stepped through last, as composed as ever, scanning the surroundings with narrow, calculating eyes.
Kazi pushed herself upright and looked around.
They stood on a narrow outcropping of black stone, jutting out over a chasm so deep the bottom was swallowed by mist. Above them, the sky, or what passed for a sky, swirled in slow, heavy currents of gray and violet. There were no stars or sun; just endless movement.
Pillars of broken stone jutted from the abyss at impossible angles, some twisted into spirals, others split cleanly down the middle like shattered spears.
"This isn't just another part of Novara," Dakarai said, voice hushed. "This is somewhere else entirely."
"It's a resonance pocket," Rhazir said. "A fragment of space pulled loose when the original fracture happened. It exists because the Mark remembers it."
Kazi turned in a slow circle, feeling her heart race harder with every step.
Somewhere, deep in the mist below, something pulsed.
It felt like a light pressure but beating, like a dark heartbeat echoing beneath her own.
She reached out with her mark, letting it pulse in response.
The pressure grew stronger.
"She's here," Kazi whispered.
Dakarai frowned. "How can you tell?"
"She's calling," Kazi said. "Not with words. With the Mark."
Rhazir stepped to the edge of the outcropping, his silhouette sharp against the swirling void. "Then we move fast. The longer we stay here, the more the fracture will notice."
"The fracture?" Dakarai asked, raising an eyebrow.
Kazi answered without thinking. "The thing inside it."
The thought had been sitting in the back of her mind since they arrived. The shadowed figure they'd glimpsed in the memory replay. The tendrils reaching outward. The crack in the Mark itself.
The fracture wasn't just a tear.
It was a type of hunger the aimed to get closer to them the longer they stayed.
A deep tremor rippled through the stone beneath their feet.
The mist ahead shifted.
Shapes moved within it,silent, slow, almost human in form but wrong. They were too tall and too thin, their limbs bending at impossible angles.
They weren't echoes or memories this time around. They were the guardians of the fracture, and they felt Kazi's presence the moment she stepped inside.
"Move!" Rhazir said, his voice clipped and urgent.
Kazi and Dakarai didn't need to be told twice.
They broke into a run, sprinting across the narrow bridge of stone toward the deeper part of the resonance field, where the pull of Luma's Mark burned brightest.
Behind them, the shapes in the mist began to move faster, gliding silently across the stones, drawn by the fire that Kazi carried in her veins.
The fracture had woken and it was coming for them.