Silence.
No more screaming wind. No more grinding ice. No more reality unmaking itself one cobblestone at a time. Just the soft whisper of snow falling through pine branches and the distant echo of his own ragged breathing.
Xavier knelt in the snow, his hands pressed against the frozen ground, staring at the spot where the portal had collapsed. The dimensional tear vanished, leaving no scar in the air to prove it had ever been. The world offered no proof the nightmare had ever been.
But Xavier knew what happened.
Dalen's weathered face, frozen mid-shout as he tried to organize a defense. Gareth's young eyes, wide with terror, his scout's instincts useless against something that could simply decide he shouldn't exist. Marta, always ready with a joke around the evening fire, was now a crystal sculpture, her crossbow still half-raised. The transformation had been instantaneous.
Henri. Jorik. The others whose names he'd never deemed valuable enough to learn.
