Kazi gripped the edge of the pillar's ledge, her chest heaving as she stared into the crack that split the stone.
Inside the fracture, reality twisted.
It wasn't just mist and broken stone. It was a scene, frozen and half-formed, like a painting smeared across shattered glass. Shapes flickered inside; pieces of rooms, glimpses of faces, flashes of memories that didn't belong to her. Every fragment floated in that broken space, circling something deeper at the center.
And standing there in the center of it all was Luma.
Or what remained of her.
Kazi's heart wrenched painfully.
Luma's figure wavered in and out of focus, her body not quite solid, not quite mist. She looked like a reflection cast onto turbulent water, warping and rippling with every breath of fractured air. Her skin was etched with faint cracks, resonance energy bleeding through the lines like veins of lightning. A crude, fractured Mark burned across her arm, jagged and unstable, like the forced experiments they had witnessed before. It wasn't natural. It pulsed with a sickly violet light, warped by the resonance that had claimed her.
As Kazi eyes were focused on her, Luma's eyes met with Kazi's and she new something was wrong.
The eyes Kazi remembered were filled with life, ambition, fear, and hope.
These were hollow, cold and stripped of everything that made Luma who she had been.
Kazi struggled to breathe, feeling a stone settle heavily in her chest.
Below, Dakarai's voice echoed up to her, tense. "Kazi! What's up there?"
She wanted to call back. She wanted to explain. But the words died in her mouth.
She didn't know how to explain what she saw.
Because Luma wasn't just trapped inside the fracture, she had become part of it.
Behind her, she heard Rhazir climbing. His steps were slow, deliberate, as if he wasn't seeing this horror for the first time. He stepped onto the ledge beside her and gazed into the split stone, his face unreadable.
"She's integrated into the resonance," Rhazir said, voice level. "Her body's here, but her mind... it's been rewritten."
Kazi swallowed, forcing herself to stay upright against the mounting weight in her chest.
"This is twisted," she whispered.
The mist stirred inside the fracture, brushing against her senses like fingertips trailing over skin. Flashes of images struck her mind, not memories of her own, but Luma's.
The night Kazi left the apartment to meet Rhazir, Luma followed. Hidden in the shadows, she watched the power Kazi wielded, watched as something she couldn't touch bloomed in someone else's hands.
After that night, the loneliness grew unbearable. Luma spent endless evenings alone in their apartment, staring at empty spaces where Kazi used to be, wondering how the world had chosen one and forgotten the other.
When Kazi finally left Novara without her, the wound inside Luma tore wide open; resentment took root; bitterness deepened.
And with it came a gnawing hunger for power; power she had never been given, but now, would take by any means.
The fracture did not kidnapped Luma. It had answered her call.
Kazi stumbled back a step, feeling as though her heart had been ripped sideways.
"She went willingly," she said aloud, the truth ringing bitter in the heavy air.
Rhazir didn't even flinch. Dakarai pulled himself up onto the ledge, eyes flicking nervously between them.
"What do you mean, willingly?" he asked, voice sharp.
Kazi didn't take her eyes off Luma's broken figure.
"She didn't run. She didn't fight back. She let them take her," Kazi said, her voice cracking at the edges. "Maybe... maybe she wanted them too."
The mist shifted again and Luma's figure moved.
Slowly, she raised one hand, not to wave and greet them or plead for her well-being, but to engage.
The mist around her coalesced into jagged blades of condensed energy, shards of the fracture's raw chaos taking form. The stone beneath Kazi's boots quivered, the air around her thickening with the crush of invisible pressure.
"She sees us as enemies," Rhazir said, not surprised. Almost... approving.
Kazi's fists clenched. Her Mark burned under her sleeve, a furious pulse that wanted to burst free.
The girl she knew was gone.
And standing in her place was something Kazi didn't recognize.
"She's going to strike!" Dakarai warned, lightning flickering along his arms.
Kazi stepped forward, heart hammering.
"No," she said, voice trembling but resolute. "I have to reach her first."
"Are you insane?" Dakarai snapped. "She'll kill you!"
"She's still in there!" Kazi shouted back. "I have to try!"
Before either of them could stop her, she stepped closer to the fracture's edge. The mist parted before her, swirling slowly like a curtain lifting.
Kazi gathered her strength, pulling on the ember deep within her chest. She focused, not on the fear clawing at her mind, but on the memory of the friend she had loved like family.
"Luma!" she shouted into the chaos. "I'm here! You're not alone!"
For a heartbeat, Luma hesitated.
Kazi swore she saw something flash across her cracked face—a flicker of recognition, a tremor of doubt.
Hope burned in Kazi's chest.
Maybe she could still reach her.
But the moment shattered like glass.
Luma's cracked lips pulled into a wide, twisted grin, and the mist howled with it. Her voice, when it came, was layered with distortion, both Luma's and something darker speaking as one:
"You're too late, Kazi."
The words hit her harder than any blow.
Before Kazi could react, the fracture exploded outward.
A blast of corrupted resonance struck her, hurling her backward off the ledge. Pain jolted through her body as she crashed onto the broken stone below, gasping for air.
Above her, Luma lunged forward, shrouded in mist and fractured energy, her arms coiled with crackling violet lightning.
Her sister, her friend and now her enemy was coming at her fast.
The battle Kazi feared had begun.