The city was a nightmare of fractured realities. In the tunnels beneath, a train car was frozen in a temporal stutter, its doors opening and closing in a rapid, silent loop. Aboveground, a building was half-submerged in a shimmering pocket of what looked like pure thought, its bricks dissolved into strange, geometric shapes. Kiran hid in a derelict basement, his body still recovering from the strain of his outburst, but his mind in far greater peril.
The "seed" was no longer just a power source. It was a chaotic, two-way tether to the tear in the sky. He felt the pull of the Eldritch's domain more strongly than ever, a constant, low-frequency hum that threatened to unravel his sanity. He would close his eyes, and instead of darkness, he would see swirling, non-Euclidean geometries. He would listen, and instead of silence, he would hear a chorus of whispers that were not words but a raw, ancient language of pain and hunger.
He also felt Liam. His brother's pain, once a faint echo, was now a constant, agonizing thrum through the tether, a sympathetic suffering that made Kiran's heart ache with a physical pain. He could feel Liam's slow, agonizing struggle against the machines that held him, the constant psychic pressure of being a living "anchor." The link was a double-edged sword: it confirmed Liam's suffering, but it also gave Kiran a grim, unwavering resolve. He was now the only one who could feel what was happening, the only one who truly understood the cost of this monstrous ritual. He had to survive. He had to sever this link, and in doing so, free his brother. He was the tether, and he was the only one who could break it.