The world was gone.
There was no up, no down, no light, no sound. There was only the crushing, suffocating pressure of absolute nothingness. I was a ghost adrift in a silent, black ocean, my consciousness a tiny, flickering candle in an infinite void. I had poured everything I had into the Heartstone, every last drop of my Yang energy, every ounce of my will, and it had answered not with a bang, but with a hole.
Then, a sensation. Not sight, not sound, but a feeling. A warmth. A gentle, insistent tug on my soul. It was Astra. The Hound of Light. In the heart of all-consuming darkness, it was a beacon, a tiny star refusing to be extinguished. It was a lifeline thrown into the abyss.
My awareness snapped back into my body with a violent gasp. I was lying on cold, damp stone. The air was thick with the smell of wet earth, ozone, and something else… something ancient and wild. The smell of raw, untamed magic.
I opened my eyes.
