The fall was endless.
Kaelen's body twisted in the void, the relic blazing faintly against the crushing dark. Lyra's scream was torn away, devoured before it reached his ears. The candle-bearer tumbled like a broken star, their tiny flame flickering desperately against the abyss.
There was no wind. No ground rushing to meet them. Only the sensation of falling through themselves, as though the void was peeling away layers of who they were, one memory at a time.
Kaelen gasped as the fire in his hand flickered, shifting into visions. His childhood—gone in a blink. His first battle—blurred into smoke. Lyra's face beside him—threatening to unravel like ink in water.
He clutched the relic tighter, forcing the flame to coil around him. "Not this time," he growled into the nothing. "You won't take her from me."
Lyra's hand found his, searing hot with determination. She didn't speak—her jaw was clenched against the pull of erasure—but her grip was iron. The contact anchored them both, flame sparking brighter between their palms.
The candle-bearer screamed suddenly, the ember in their hands snuffed to nearly nothing. Kaelen's heart lurched. He willed his flame outward, weaving it into a tether that caught them, wrapping all three in a fragile cocoon of fire.
The void recoiled.
And then—they hit.
Not ground, not tiles. Something else. A surface that wasn't a surface, a horizon that stretched in every direction, bending like liquid glass. They landed hard, the impact cracking the light around them into ripples that spread for miles.
Kaelen staggered to his feet. His breath caught.
Above them, the eye was gone. In its place stretched a sky of fractals, infinite patterns folding and unfolding, each one a universe glimpsed and lost in an instant. The world they had fallen into pulsed with impossible geometry, towers and bridges that built themselves from nothing, only to collapse and rebuild in new forms.
Lyra exhaled, her sword humming faintly in her grip. "Where… are we?"
The candle-bearer trembled, lifting their flame—it was small, but alive. Their voice was a whisper. "Beyond the board. Beyond the game."
A shadow flickered across the horizon. It wasn't the eye—something different, something larger. Dozens of eyes, maybe hundreds, blinked open in the patterns above, watching. Each one older, hungrier, more vast than the one they had faced.
Kaelen's stomach sank. "Gods," he whispered. "The eye was never the master. Just a player."
The world shuddered as the watchers leaned closer. Their voices overlapped, a chorus of infinity.
"The game is eternal. Welcome, pieces, to the higher board."
Lyra raised her blade, defiant even against eternity. Her grin was fierce through exhaustion. "Then let's see how they like pieces that bite back."