The fall started the mont the bead swallowed .
There was no warning. No pull. No shift in weight. One heartbeat I was standing in Elijah’s cottage, bead raised to my eyes. The next heartbeat I dropped straight out of the world.
An overwhelming deluge of pure, incandescent light rushed at from every conceivable direction. It was not gentle, cohesive light, but thick, violent bands of color that stread past like torn ribbons of existence.
Red did not fade, but brutally folded into brilliant, electric blue. Gold bled into a painful, shrieking violet. These ribbons twisted around in the void, never quite touching, yet feeling acutely present, almost alive, almost curious about the sudden arrival of flesh and bone. My stomach did a devastating lurch, and the familiar markers of orientation dissolved. I was imdiately lost, unable to tell if I was truly falling or floating, or if the entire space around was in agonizing motion while my own body remained fixed and helpless at its core.
Then, with an abruptness that stole the breath from my chest, the reality I was experiencing flipped.
My body was caught mid-descent, hanging motionless in the non-air, as if snagged by invisible, colossal hands. There was no longer any ground beneath , and certainly no sky above. There was only an endless, searing wash of brightness that stretched out like a colossal, shattered rainbow. My arms drifted slowly away from my sides, already feeling distant, my fingers numb and unresponsive. My heart, an erratic, trapped bird, hamred a frantic rhythm in my throat, each beat a painful, desperate plea for solidity. Every breath I managed to take ca in a sharp, shallow gasp that did little to soothe the building panic.
I tried desperately to ground myself with my own voice, to cry out a na or a question, but the attempt produced nothing but a thick, dry choke.
A soft hum settled around , vibrating through my bones. For a mont it felt like I was inside a bell soone had just struck. The sound faded. The stillness returned. And out of nowhere, gravity grabbed again.
I dropped.
No stop. No pause. Just another plunge through color and light. My own voice tore out in a choked gasp as wind roared past my ears. I couldn’t see my limbs. Everything was a sar, a streak. The bead didn’t feel like an artifact anymore. It felt like a throat swallowing deeper with every fall.
Then the fall stopped—again.
Suspended. Weightless.
This ti no light followed . Only quiet. Thick, heavy quiet that crawled into my skin. I drifted like a leaf with no direction, no breeze, no sense of up or down. My vision blurred at the edges, then cleared just enough for to see a single dot of darkness ahead.
The dot grew.
And grew.
And swallowed everything.
When the last bit of light died, I hit the ground hard.
The impact slamd through my ribs. Air punched out of my lungs in a wheeze. I lay still for a mont, ears ringing, cheek pressed against sothing cold and grainy. Dust? Sand? I couldn’t tell. The darkness around wasn’t normal. It felt heavier, like ink wrapped around the world.
I pushed myself up slowly, palms shaking.
A thick mist curled across the floor in lazy coils, brushing my ankles. The place slled faintly of tal and sothing burnt. My eyes adjusted bit by bit, shapes forming where there hadn’t been any before.
The sky didn’t look like a sky. It stretched infinitely high but carried the sa depth as the night above any countryside. Stars scattered everywhere, bright, sharp, like soone threw a handful of shattered crystals across a void. No moon. No clouds. Just the cosmos staring back at .
A shiver ran through .
This wasn’t a world.
It was a dream soone carved open and left abandoned.
I took a cautious step forward. The ground didn’t echo. It didn’t even crunch. It simply accepted my weight like a sponge and settled. The mist parted quietly. My heartbeat felt too loud for a place like this.
Then I saw it.
The sword.
It lay half-buried in the dark sand a few paces ahead, the blade wrapped in thick black smoke that curled and twisted as if it breathed. It wasn’t glowing. It wasn’t calling out. It simply waited, patient and still, like it had all the ti in existence to be found.
My chest tightened, but I still walked toward it.
Each step felt heavier than the last. The mist curled tighter around my ankles, as if testing . I swallowed hard, crouched, and reached for the hilt.
The mont my fingers touched it, the mist recoiled.
Then every inch of space flipped upside down.
My vision spun so fast my stomach twisted. One second I was standing. The next I was inverted, body bent backward, feet above my head as if the world had turned into a reflection and forced into its shape. Blood rushed to my skull so violently I swore my eyes would burst.
Gravity multiplied in an instant.
My spine bent with a sickening crack. My ribs scread. My arms shook, locked in place by pressure I couldn’t fight. The sword glued itself to my hand, the tal cold enough to bite into my skin.
Pain carved through like soone driving nails into every joint.
A strangled sound tore from my throat. I tried to breathe, but the weight crushed my chest. My fingers twitched uselessly. Spots exploded across my vision. My jaw clenched until I heard a pop.
Then the pressure doubled.
My back arched.
My knees snapped downward in the wrong direction.
Sothing hot surged up my throat.
I coughed blood.
It sprayed out in a ssy arc, drifting upward—no, downward—no, sideways. I couldn’t tell anymore. Everything was wrong. Everything twisted. The air bent around like warped glass.
The scream ripped through before I realized I was the one making the sound.
And I couldn’t stop.
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