We ran.
Not just ran fled, lungs tearing, legs screaming, the forest howling behind us like a living thing denied its meal. Branches lashed at our faces, roots grabbed at our ankles, and the ground seemed determined to trip us just to see who would fall first. No one spoke. There was no breath to waste on words, no space in our minds for anything except forward.
Forward or die.
The rupture Nora had found wasn't a glowing gate or a clean tear in the world like the ones in stories. It was a wrongness in the land, a subtle distortion where trees bent inward, where sound dulled and mana slid sideways instead of flowing straight. You wouldn't notice it unless you were already half-dead and desperate enough to feel the world rather than look at it.
We burst through it like drowning people breaking the surface.
And fell.
Not down, in, a straight drop to hell.
