Days had passed since Sanavak's roar fell silent and the city exhaled in relief. People returned to their broken homes, patching up cracked streets with scrap metal and hope. Flowers bloomed in the strangest places — sidewalks, rooftops, old cars turned to gardens. Everywhere Liyaya stepped, green followed like a promise.
Zindra, though, felt no peace.
At night, he stood alone in the shadow of the ruined factory, one hand pressed to the broken ground where the core had died. He felt the ghost of Sanavak's hunger like a cold echo beneath his fingertips.
It should be gone.
But deep inside, the Senlord's remnants whispered otherwise. He could sense pieces of the devourer slipping into cracks too small to see — feeding on the city's fear, the fractures in its bones, the weakness between worlds.
---
The First Rift
Liyaya found him there at dawn, the rising sun turning the smoldering ruins gold. She knelt beside him, brushing his shoulder with warm fingers. "You feel it too, don't you?" she asked softly.
He turned to her — eyes tired, runes faint but alive. "It's not finished, Liyaya. The core broke — but the pieces are seeds, scattered where the walls between realms are thin. I can hear them."
Liyaya closed her eyes, pressing her palms to the cracked concrete. Roots pushed through, tiny green tendrils sniffing at the old wound like curious spirits. Her eyes widened — she felt it too. A pulse under the city, like a heartbeat out of sync with Earth's own.
Before she could speak, the air around them shivered. A low, rolling rumble vibrated through the ground. Cracks snaked out from the factory's ruin, the edges glowing with a dull, sickly light.
Zindra staggered back as a thin, vertical gash opened in the air — a tear shimmering like liquid glass. On the other side, the sky was dark and heavy, a realm suffocating under endless shadow.
Through the breach, they felt it — the same hunger that had whispered in the cult's eyes. Fragments, calling to each other across worlds.
---
The Warning
Zindra steadied himself, his hand finding Liyaya's. "If these rifts stay open, Sanavak's hunger won't just come back — it'll feed on every realm the Council abandoned. It will grow stronger than anything we faced."
Liyaya's pulse quickened — but there was no fear in her eyes. Only resolve. "Then we don't let it. We find every fragment. We seal every breach. We heal the realms, one root at a time."
A cold wind drifted from the tear, carrying echoes of voices — not quite human, not quite sane. Zindra stepped closer, runes flickering to life along his arms. Liyaya's fingertips brushed the edge of the rift — the roots curled around her wrist like living bracelets.
Above them, the broken city held its breath.
Below them, Earth whispered that this was only the beginning.