Chapter 152

Reality tore open above me - above Unity - and something impossible spilled through. Colors that had no right to exist bled into the world, so bright and vibrant that my eyes ached just trying to follow them.

Pressure hit me like a hammer. The air was ripped from my lungs. I tried to rise but couldn’t. Gravity pressed down, heavy and merciless, like the world itself was trying to grind me into dust.

The shirt and cloak disintegrated, bursting into silver motes that drifted upward, drawn into the Interstitium like ash caught in a rising wind. The staff remained - somehow - still embedded in the wall, still burning like a fountain of sparks.

My senses fractured further. I couldn’t tell where I ended and everything else began.

Harris was shouting - distant yet near - his voice distorted. Light slammed into me like a gale. Cold flooded through the link, deep and bone-numbing, while heat threatened to boil my blood - burning and freezing, calm and chaos layered on top of each other until nothing made sense.

Something reached through the tear.

Not what I feared. Not the slick, inky hunger of the Myrddin.

This was different. Silver instead of black - unraveling strands of light, weaving and unweaving faster than the eye could follow. It moved like something trying to remember how to be whole. It hung there for a heartbeat, almost curious - then it struck.

Lilae flashed red before she was dragged screaming into the Interstitium.

I screamed out to her, but the sound never reached me - lost in the low, monstrous hum of the rift as it bled color into the world.

Mirri was next. The tendril split, threads multiplying, wrapping around her before I could even move. She disappeared into the light just as quickly.

Ashlara and Serah were swallowed whole. Thae was plucked from the air mid-flight, her wings snapping uselessly as she was torn away.

The silver spread - splintering into finer and finer filaments, stretching outward like a web cast too wide.

Tansy went down snarling, dragged kicking into the breach. Vel and Moss were reeled in like hooked fish. Nim held for a moment - feet planted, muscles locked - tearing deep furrows in the soil beneath him as he resisted.

For a heartbeat, it looked like he might win. Then the ground gave way and he vanished with the rest.

Even Clo - fast enough to be everywhere at once - was caught. The web thickened, tightened, and she disappeared into it like she’d never been there at all.

I saw another tendril erupt from the staff still burning in the wall. It speared a police officer clean through the chest.

His mouth opened in a soundless scream - the sound drowned out by the horrid vibrations of the rift - and then came apart, unraveling into brittle, lifeless brambles that collapsed where he stood.

Harris was shouting - orders, commands - I couldn’t tell, it was all swallowed by the deep thrum that nullified all sound.

Civilians flooded from the tunnel - stumbling - their faces twisted in fear, clutching each other as they ran. Even in panic, they held the line - helping the injured, dragging the weak forward.

The tendrils struck again. Two officers caught this time. Fire took them - bright and unnatural - consuming them from the inside out. Their screams were never heard as they collapsed into twisted vines and charred sticks.

The staff finally gave way. It burst apart into a storm of silver motes, drawn upward into the rift, each one flaring and sputtering as it went - burning out as it crossed the threshold.

The tear loomed above me - widening, or descending - I couldn’t tell which.

The pressure increased - crushing and relentless. Everything I was felt like it was being squeezed out of existence.

Light swallowed the world. It flared once and then I was falling. No control. No direction. Just the endless void of the Interstitium rushing up to meet me as ribbons of Faith slammed into me from every side, tearing at my Will like claws trying to pull me apart.

* * *

My perception continued to fracture - the perspectives from Unity shattering alongside everything else - splintering from three to six to twelve and beyond. Layer upon layer of conflicting images, sounds, and sensations fought for dominance until I lost any sense of where I was.

Above it all, my Faith-scape burned, spinning like a kaleidoscope as I saw it from a dozen angles at once. Each beacon shifted and multiplied, filling my vision with hundreds of stars where there should have been nine.

The only constant was the pressure that kept building. Without gravity, without ground, it pressed in from every direction at once - threatening to crush me down into something small and fragile - a marble caught in a vice.

Through the chaos, I heard my family - screams and shouts echoing from both near and impossibly far, filtering through the fractures in my mind.

The Interstitium tore at my body. Raw Faith battered me. Vertigo clawed at what remained of my awareness.

Lilae screamed as she passed nearby.

I reached for her. The pressure tried to pin my arms to my sides, to compress me into stillness. I ground my teeth and **** myself to move - muscles burning, straining against the invisible weight.

She spun past me, her hand drifting close before slipping through my fingers as my perspective tore away. In the next instant, she was impossibly distant and unreachable.

Tansy hurtled overhead, snarling and growling, her body already beginning to dissolve at the edges.

I stretched for her. My fingers brushed her leg and then everything shifted again. She was gone, thrown across an impossible distance.

Mirri’s mana flared, a burst of green light that shoved me away - body and mind - casting me elsewhere in the void between worlds.

My consciousness slammed into Vel, knocking her aside as I spun out of control.

I tried to focus. Tried to anchor on Lilae. Her image rose through the chaos, sharpening -

- only for Serah, in her enormous dragon form, to crash through the layers and scatter everything again.

I ricocheted, bouncing off Nim, Ashlara, then Clo.

Her layer snapped into clarity. She was curled tight, vibrating like a wound spring on the verge of snapping. Color streamed off her in long, tearing ribbons, like a comet shedding itself as the Interstitium stripped away her Faith.

Around me, the beacons flickered and dimmed as they were torn apart.

I **** myself back to Lilae. Pushed everything else down. Her layer rose again.

She was fading - faster than the others - her beacon already dimming to the point I struggled to see it.

My hands were already moving when she came into reach. I caught her. Pulled her in. My Faith wrapped around her in a fragile shell that shuddered with every impact. Each ribbon of raw Faith that struck us threatened to crack it open.

Her skin was raw, weeping. Her hair hung in tangled ruin. Her eyes stayed closed. But she was breathing.

I held her tighter and reached for Tansy.

Mirri and Ashlara were dimmer, but steady. Tansy wasn’t. Her Faith flared and collapsed erratically, like a pilot light in a storm. She looked ready to shatter at any moment.

The layers churned. Shifted. Threw me from one perspective to another.

Somehow, Lilae stayed with me - her weight constant in my arms, not quite limp.

The pressure built further. My joints popped, my whole body creaking as if caught in a tightening vise.

Tansy rose into reach. I lunged-

-and missed, slamming into Serah’s side before bouncing away.

I **** everything else aside and focused on only Tansy.

Her layer surged up again. I reached out and caught her ankle.

She hissed, thrashed, growled - but I held on, dragging her into the fragile bubble of my Faith. It warped and twisted with every impact.

Ashlara came next. I hit her head-on and pulled her in, wrapping her together with the others. Her eyes fluttered weakly, barely conscious.

There were three in my arms now. The chaos lessened - just a fraction. Fewer layers. Fewer fractures.

I reached Mirri more easily this time. She latched onto my back, scrambling for purchase as I tried - futilely - to slow our momentum.

The pressure continued to rise within me. My bones ached. My Faith fractured further, jagged edges grinding together like shattered glass pressed against asphalt. Each sharp edge drove into me, needles in my chest, and the heat inside me surged higher.

I collided with Serah again - but this time I didn’t bounce away.

I don’t know how I held on. She was impossibly vast, yet somehow small enough to grasp. Both at once.

My family surrounded me. My arms were full. My legs locked around Moss as she joined us, her Faith reinforcing the fragile shell. Nim grabbed my foot, his grip crushing bone. His Faith slammed into place around us like a wall.

Still, the pressure inside me kept building. Something broke. I couldn’t tell if it was bone or something deeper.

Serah caught Vel as we tore past. Nim dragged Thae into the cluster.

My Faith flickered and collapsed - a pinpoint, trembling on the edge of extinction.

Heat spiked. It flared once - brief and **** - like something trying to ignite and failing. Then it collapsed again.

We fell, drawing closer to Clo - still curled in on herself, still streaking through the void like a dying star.

I reached for my Faith. For the demesne. Heat surged again. A flicker - stronger this time.

Vel reached out. I’d overshot the mark. We passed Clo - still out of range.

A single, silver tendril lashed out from my back - caught Clo - and everything shifted.

* * *

Gravity reasserted itself and I met it face-first.

The impact drove the air from my lungs as a crushing weight followed, bearing down on my back hard enough to threaten my ribs. My face was ground into the earth - but I could feel the cold press of soil and the damp tickle of grass against my cheek.

The pressure shifted. Lessened, just a fraction. I was still pinned. Still unable to breathe. But no longer on the verge of folding in on myself.

Sound returned next. Muffled. Distant. Voices, maybe - but too warped to understand.

Something jabbed into my kidney. I jerked instinctively, but my body refused to obey. More weight shifted overhead.

Then light - dim and diffuse - seeping in at the edges.

Something pressed hard against the back of my neck, then relented.

Air rushed into me and I dragged in a breath - deep, ragged, and ****. It felt like the first real breath I’d taken in days.

The weight lifted fully.

I rolled onto my back - coughing and spitting out dirt and strands of grass.

Above me, the sky stretched out - dark, empty, and mercifully still. No clouds. No stars. Just a quiet void, a gentler kind of nothing than the one we’d just escaped.

At the edges of my vision, soft colors drifted and flickered - bioluminescent moths settling into the grass, their glow pulsing in slow, quiet rhythms.

I turned my head.

Mirri knelt over Lilae, her hands spilling soft green light as mana poured into my daughter’s ruined body. The angry pink of raw and abraded flesh softened, shifting toward pale gray as it knit itself back together. Her breathing steadied. Color returned to her cheeks.

Her eyes fluttered open.

“V-vaer?” she whispered.

“Hold still, Lilae. You’ll be okay,” Mirri murmured, already turning toward Ashlara.

Ashlara’s breathing came sharp and shallow, each inhale catching as if her lungs had forgotten how to work. Her skin was still raw, slick with damage, but her eyes flickered - opening and closing - as she stubbornly clung to consciousness.

Mirri’s light poured into her.

Ashlara drew in a stiff, shuddering breath. Then another. The tension in her face eased, her eyes settling half-lidded, steadier now - present.

We all looked like we’d been dragged through the end of the world.

Elise came rushing over from the castle - the power of the demesne making every one of her steps count at ten.

I stayed where I was - flat on my back. Empty. Hollow in a way that had nothing to do with hunger and yet felt similar - like I hadn’t eaten in days. Like something inside me had been scraped clean.

It wasn’t crushing despair. Just… absence. Like entering a vast, abandoned house and hearing your own footsteps echo in the silence.

I didn’t have the strength to move, so I lay there, staring into the dark, and listened - to the voices of my family. Relief. Fear. Questions. Laughter - strained at the edges.

We were alive and home.