Cold wind bit into his face.
Kaai stirred, half-conscious, his body aching with the dull throb of bruises. The world hummed beneath him — low, steady, alive. For a moment, he didn't remember where he was. Then he realized what that sound was.
Breathing.
Not his.
He jerked upright — too fast — and pain flared down his left side. His forehead brushed against something soft, something faintly warm. When his eyes focused, he found himself leaning against the girl's shoulder. Her hair glowed faintly, brushing his cheek with a shimmer of white-gold light.
He cursed under his breath. "I fell asleep…? Seriously?"
The words were low, half-whispered, half-directed at himself.
The girl turned slightly at his movement. For a fleeting second, her hair pulsed with a soft yellow light before fading back to white. He didn't understand the color.
He groaned, rubbing the side of his head. Everything after the ruins was a blur — the flight, the giants, the endless dark. His body had shut down from exhaustion, and now the memories bled together like smoke in wind.
When his vision steadied, he saw it — light creeping along the edges of the horizon, illuminating the sky.
It was dawn.
But not the dawn of the world he remembered.
Not light — fracture.
The sky itself was split open, a wound leaking rivers of color. Gold and crimson ran through the clouds like molten veins, bleeding into hues of violet and deep black. The air shimmered, trembling as if the very atmosphere was alive — as though the world was breathing through its own scars.
Beneath that terrible beauty stretched a land that refused logic.
To his left, the continent had been cut open. A canyon yawned across the earth, spanning miles, edges glowing faintly under the fractured light. But it wasn't the glow that froze him — it was the darkness. A black radiance bled along its rim, alive and shifting, like something conscious was stirring beneath the crust. Kaai's gut twisted. That wasn't a shadow. That was awareness.
To his right rose a mountain. A spike of stone — solitary, titanic — piercing the heavens. Lightning crawled over its surface like veins trapped in glass, silver threads eternally circling but never striking. It didn't rise from the ground; it hung from the sky, driven into the world like a nail through flesh.
And far ahead, beyond the haze and stormlight, he saw something vast — a silhouette half-swallowed by black fog. At first glance it seemed like architecture: towers, arches, a cathedral maybe. But as the gowl drifted closer, the shape twisted, folding inward upon itself like ribs enclosing a heart. It was not built. It was grown. And even from here, Kaai could feel it — the pulse of something ancient, watching through the mist.
He tore his gaze away, his heart hammering.
Then he looked forward — and his breath left him.
A forest sprawled across the horizon.
At first, he thought they were mountains cloaked in green. Then perspective shifted. The "peaks" were trunks — trees, but not trees. Colossal, impossible things, rising kilometers into the air. Roots broke through valleys like veins of black stone, and canopies merged with clouds, forming a second sky. Their bark glowed faintly, alive with veins of light, and every so often, something moved between them — vast, slow, deliberate.
The gowl drifted closer, its hum blending with the wind.
The forest pulsed faintly beneath them — not random, not alive, but aware. Kaai could feel it in his bones: the pressure of being seen by something vast, something patient.
He swallowed hard. "This isn't the human world anymore."
The girl didn't answer. Her gaze stayed fixed ahead, hair glowing steady white — calm, unshaken. Her hands never left the gowl's controls, fingers steady, posture sure.
Kaai leaned back against the railing, eyes sweeping the fractured sky, the glowing canyons, the towering forests — the impossible world breathing around them. Every instinct told him to be afraid.
But another part of him, deeper and older, whispered something else.
Awe.
Because this wasn't one land.
It was many — torn from their worlds and forced to coexist, entire realms stitched together and left to bleed under a broken sky.
As they flew through the forest, Kaai saw it — a platform, a base, built on a tree much shorter than the rest of the titanic kin.
The gowl tilted and descended, cutting through mist and branches until its thrusters hummed against the bark. The moment it touched down, Kaai felt it — a sharp force slamming against him like a wall of dense air. His skin prickled, the air around him thickening for just a heartbeat before easing.
The platform looked impossible. Wood, sinew, and corroded metal fused together, held not by nails or bolts but by some unknown power. Strips of aircraft hull curved into living roots, pulsing faintly under the fractured light.
The girl hopped down first, her boots barely making a sound. She picked up her pack without hesitation. The gowl's lights dimmed as if it had fallen asleep, humming once before settling into silence.
Kaai followed, eyes wide, mind racing.
"You made this?" he asked. "Are there others?"
No reply.
He stepped off the craft anyway, boots sinking slightly into the soft, moss-covered metal. His voice came out faster, sharper — the need to fill the silence growing with every breath.
"Others means more survivors, right? More people like you—"
The girl didn't answer. She kept walking toward the trunk, movements sure and calm. Then, halfway there, she stopped.
And turned.
Kaai frowned. "What? Did I say—"
Then he saw her expression. Or rather, the lack of one. Her eyes weren't on him.
They were on something behind him.
He felt it before he turned — the sudden drop in temperature, the way the air pressed down on his shoulders, the hum of the forest falling still.
A shadow fell over him.
Big. Moving.
Kaai's pulse spiked. He spun around—
And froze.
The thing that loomed above him wasn't just massive. It was wrong. Its outline didn't match the light, like it existed half a second out of sync with the world. Flesh merged with stone, armor formed from bone and mud. The faint glow of runes pulsed across its skin, leaking threads of black mist into the air.
Two eyes opened within the shadow.
Not glowing. Reflecting.
Kaai couldn't move. The weight of its gaze pinned him in place, every instinct screaming to run — but his body refused to listen.
Then it leaned closer, the forest bending with its breath. The barrier — whatever it was — rippled faintly, distorting the air between them. The creature tilted its head, confused, its gaze sweeping through him like a knife through smoke.
Then the beast's head twitched. Its nostrils flared.
And with dreadful, deliberate slowness — it turned those eyes back toward him.
Right at him.
Their gazes locked.