The rift at the ruined factory pulsed like a wound in the air — edges raw and humming with a soft, hungry hiss. Around it, the broken concrete steamed where roots tangled with the edges, trying to stitch the tear closed but failing to hold it back.
Zindra watched the shifting opening with narrowed eyes. His runes flickered brighter the closer he stepped, responding to the pull of the devourer's scattered fragments on the other side.
Beside him, Liyaya stood with one hand pressed to the ground, roots snaking around her wrist, binding her to Earth's pulse so she wouldn't lose herself when they crossed through. The people who'd fought beside them before lingered at a distance — some hiding behind ruined walls, some peering over rusted barricades, too afraid to look directly at the shimmering breach.
A young boy, no older than ten, crept closer. Dirt smeared his face, but a tiny flower bloomed from the tear in his coat pocket — a gift from Liyaya days before.
"Are you going away again?" he asked, his voice barely louder than the wind.
Liyaya turned and knelt, pressing a finger under his chin to lift his gaze. "Not away. Just… deeper. Somewhere sick that needs healing."
The boy glanced at Zindra's runes, then back to the rift. "Will it try to eat you?"
Zindra almost smiled — the brutal honesty of it. He lowered himself to the boy's level. "It might. But it won't succeed. Not this time."
Through the Tear
They left the people behind, stepping closer to the rift. Zindra slipped his hand into Liyaya's — her warmth grounding him as the Senlord's power coiled in his veins. He knew Cyne would sense them crossing realms without permission. He knew the Council would send enforcers to drag him back in chains — or burn him as a traitor.
He no longer cared.
They stood at the threshold. Liyaya glanced up at the dead smokestacks, now threaded with vines that glowed softly in the early dawn. "When we step through," she murmured, "we don't just fight what's waiting. We wake up what's still alive."
Zindra squeezed her hand. "Then let's wake it."
Together, they stepped through.
The Other Side
Cold slammed into them like a wall of frozen mist. The rift closed behind them with a whispering sigh. They stood in darkness under a sky of heavy, ash-colored clouds that flickered with distant, sickly lightning.
The ground beneath their feet was cracked, lifeless stone. No roots — only dry veins where rivers once ran. Half-buried in the dark soil were broken spires, jagged and half-swallowed by creeping shadows.
Zindra felt the echo of ancient sentinels here — the same runes that pulsed under his skin burned faintly in the ruin. This realm was once alive with starborn power — but Cyne had turned its light off and left it to rot.
Liyaya dropped to her knees, pressing her palms to the cracked ground. She gasped — feeling a heartbeat, faint but desperate, deep under layers of decay. "There's life still here," she breathed. "Trapped. Waiting."
Something moved on the horizon — a shifting mass of darkness, slow but certain. The devourer's seed, swollen from feeding on this realm's last scraps of life.
Zindra braced himself, his voice a promise in the dead wind. "Then we free it — or die trying.