Minutes passed. The air grew colder. Not physically—something deeper, something in the rules binding the world. Frost crawled across the anchor's shoulders despite no temperature drop. The ground patterns twisted beneath them, spiraling inwards toward a point they couldn't yet see.
Cain leaned forward. "That it?"
"Yes."
The anchor's steps slowed automatically. It wasn't fear — it was instinct. Even an unstable creature assembled by a broken thread understood danger.
A shadow rose over the next ridge.
Cain's jaw clenched.
That wasn't a beast.
It was an absence. A hole carved into the world that moved like a predator.
As they crested the ridge, the full horror took shape. The city the Exile had shown him wasn't entirely gone — fragments of it floated in the air, suspended like pieces of shattered glass frozen mid-fall. Streets curled upwards. Buildings bent like paper twisted around a fist. The sky above the center sank inward, forming a vortex of lightless matter.
