Reality collapsed like a house of cards caught in a hurricane.
The Devourers poured through the tears in space with the terrible inevitability of darkness consuming light. Lio felt their presence as a wrongness that made his enhanced consciousness recoil—entities that existed not to create or transform, but to unmake the very concept of existence itself.
"Move!" Shia's voice cut through the chaos like a blade through silk. Her hand found his wrist with impossible accuracy, her grip carrying the kind of urgency that made panic seem like a luxury they couldn't afford.
The emerald garden writhed around them as it died. Trees that had grown for eons in defiance of natural law crumbled to ash in seconds. The crystalline fruit that had held memories of every choice that mattered burst like soap bubbles, their contents scattering into void. Even the impossible butterflies, creatures of pure light and wonder, were being consumed—their golden trails fading to nothing as the Devourers fed.
