Madness was creeping into Ilyrana's every breath.
Her sobs had thinned into trembling gasps, her eyes swollen and red, her fingers twitching over Luke's still form as if she couldn't decide whether to hold him or shake him awake. The air around her felt heavier with every second — the kind of stillness that made her feel she was losing her mind. The silence wasn't just silence anymore. It was a mockery. The gods were silent. The magic was silent. The Heart — that damned relic — had failed her.
And so, in the darkness of that sunken chamber, Ilyrana teetered between grief and delirium. Her body was still here, but her mind… it was starting to fracture.
Meanwhile — far away, or perhaps within the same breath — Luke was adrift.
A vast, boundless dark stretched around him. Not cold, not empty — but endless. Familiar, in a strange way. This was where he had been before. The plane between being and not-being. The liminal space where thought and soul existed without a body.
