The dimensional rift yawned before them like a wound in reality itself.
Grimm stood at the precipice, his black robes snapping in the wind that shouldn't exist—not here, not at the edge of the void. The air tasted of copper and ozone, a metallic tang that coated his tongue and reminded him of blood. Above, the sky of the Wizard World stretched in familiar gradients of blue. Below, nothing. Or rather, something that defied the concept of "something."
"The edge of the dimensional gap," Lyra whispered, her voice carrying that particular hush people used in sacred places. Or cursed ones. "I never thought I'd see it with my own eyes."
Grimm didn't respond. His vertical pupils—marks of his Alchemy Mutation—dilated as he stared into the abyss. To ordinary vision, the dimensional gap appeared as empty darkness, a void between worlds where conventional physics held no sway. But Grimm's mutated eyes perceived more. He saw the currents of dimensional energy flowing like invisible rivers, the eddies where different realities brushed against each other, the thin membrane that separated existence from non-existence.
"The reports place the Void Worm nest three hundred meters down," Kael said, consulting a crystalline compass that spun uselessly in his palm. "Though 'down' is a relative term here."
"Down is wherever gravity decides to point," Millie added. She stood slightly apart from the others, her ice-blue eyes fixed on the rift with an expression Grimm couldn't quite read. Determination, certainly. But something else too—anticipation? "I've studied the dimensional gap theory. The rules are... flexible."
Grimm finally turned to face his squad. Four of them, including himself. A small team for such dangerous territory, but the Academy had been clear: this was a reconnaissance mission, not a full expedition. The Void Worms had been spotted nesting near the edge of the gap, their presence threatening to destabilize the boundary between dimensions. Someone needed to assess the situation. Someone with experience in the gap.
Someone like Grimm.
"Listen carefully," he said, his voice carrying the cold precision that had become his trademark. "Once we cross the threshold, conventional magic becomes unreliable. The dimensional energy will interfere with spell matrices. We'll need to rely on physical mutations and innate abilities."
"Your specialty," Kael noted with a tight smile. The former mercenary-turned-apprentice had seen his share of strange battlefields, but Grimm could see the tension in his shoulders—the way his hand kept drifting toward the short blade at his hip. Kael had once told him, during a rare moment of camaraderie over cheap ale, that he had left the mercenary life to find something worth dying for. The dimensional gap, it seemed, was testing whether he had found it yet.
"Our survival," Grimm corrected.
He pulled the Mask of Truth from his robes—a gift from his mentor, now deceased, its surface etched with runes that glowed with faint silver light. The mask settled over his face, and suddenly the dimensional gap revealed its secrets in stark clarity. The energy currents became visible rivers of light, the boundaries between dimensions marked as shimmering walls, and there—yes—three hundred meters "down," a pulsing nest of violet luminescence.
"I see them," Grimm said, his voice muffled by the mask. "The nest. It's... larger than the reports suggested."
"How large?" Lyra asked, her hand already moving to the wand at her belt. The scholarly apprentice—who had traded a life of noble privilege for the pursuit of forbidden knowledge—adjusted her spectacles with her free hand, a nervous habit she couldn't quite break. Grimm knew she kept a journal of every expedition, documenting dangers that might save future teams. It was her way of making sense of the chaos.
"Large enough that we might be out of our depth." Grimm paused, considering. "But the Academy needs this intelligence. We'll proceed with caution."
Millie stepped forward, her pale fingers tracing patterns in the air—preparatory gestures for her ice magic. "I'm ready."
Something in her tone caught Grimm's attention. Not fear. Not hesitation. A quiet confidence that hadn't been there before, not in the early days when she'd been a burdened apprentice carrying her family's declining legacy on her shoulders.
She had grown. They all had. But Millie's growth had been subtle, internal, easy to miss if you weren't paying attention.
Grimm was always paying attention.
"Before we descend," Millie said, her voice low enough that only Grimm could hear, "I should mention something. My family's informants passed along a rumor last week. The Blood Sail Alliance has been asking questions about dimensional artifacts—specifically something called the Fire Fusion Orb. They believe it might be hidden in the gap."
Grimm's eyes narrowed behind the mask. The Blood Sail Alliance—a shadowy coalition of rogue wizards and artifact hunters—had been growing bolder in recent months. "You think the Void Worms were drawn here by the Orb?"
"I think," Millie said carefully, "that we should be prepared for more than just worms."
"Formation," he ordered, filing the information away for later analysis. "I'll lead. Lyra, cover our flank. Kael, watch for dimensional instabilities. Millie—" he paused, "—you'll handle rear guard. The Void Worms are drawn to heat and life energy. Your ice magic might deter them."
Millie nodded, her expression unreadable. But Grimm caught the slight tightening of her jaw, the way her fingers curled into fists before relaxing. She wanted to prove herself. That desire burned in her like a cold flame, visible to anyone who knew how to look.
"On my mark," Grimm said, raising his hand. "Three... two... one..."
He stepped into the void.
The sensation was indescribable—not falling, exactly, but moving in a direction that had no name. The dimensional gap swallowed him whole, and for a moment, Grimm ceased to be Grimm. He was simply a point of consciousness adrift in the space between worlds, surrounded by the raw stuff of creation itself.
Then his mutations activated—his body's adaptation to this impossible environment—and reality reasserted itself. He could feel his limbs again, sense the others following behind him, taste the strange not-air of the gap.
They were in.
And somewhere in the swirling darkness ahead, the Void Worms waited.
The first attack came without warning.
Grimm had been navigating the dimensional currents for perhaps five minutes when the darkness itself seemed to writhe. His mask revealed the distortion—a ripple in the fabric of space that moved with purpose, with hunger.
"Contact!" he shouted, raising his hand.
The Void Worm erupted from the dimensional substrate like a fish breaching water, except this fish was three meters long and composed of crystallized void energy. Its body was translucent, revealing internal structures that hurt to look at—geometries that shouldn't exist in three-dimensional space, organs that pulsed with non-light.
Lyra's wand came up, a fire spell already forming on her lips. The flame burst forth, brilliant and hot—and passed harmlessly through the worm's semi-corporeal form.
"Physical attacks only!" Grimm snapped, his body already shifting. The Alchemy Mutation surged through his veins, reshaping muscle and bone into something harder, something sharper. His fingers elongated into crystalline claws that hummed with dimensional resonance. "They're creatures of the gap. Conventional magic can't touch them!"
The worm lunged.
Grimm met it head-on, his mutated claws tearing through the creature's not-flesh. The sensation was wrong—like cutting through water that screamed, through smoke that bled. The worm shrieked, a sound that bypassed ears and resonated directly in the skull, and dissolved into violet fragments that were immediately absorbed by the surrounding darkness.
"More coming!" Kael yelled.
He was right. The dimensional currents were churning now, disturbed by the death-scream of their fellow. Three more worms emerged from the void, then five, then eight—a swarm of translucent predators converging on the intruders in their domain.
"Defensive formation!" Grimm commanded, even as he launched himself at the nearest worm. "Millie, ice barriers! Lyra, physical enchantments! Kael, watch for—"
A worm slammed into Kael's shoulder, its crystalline teeth—if they could be called teeth—tearing through his protective robes. He screamed, a sound of genuine pain, and stumbled backward into the dimensional current.
"Kael!" Lyra cried out.
Grimm moved without thought, his mutated body propelling him through the void faster than any human should move. He intercepted the second worm before it could finish Kael, his claws raking across its not-flesh and sending it recoiling with another of those skull-piercing shrieks.
"Get him to stable ground!" Grimm ordered, dragging Kael back toward the others. "There's a dimensional anchor point twenty meters to the left. Move!"
The squad retreated, fighting every step of the way. Lyra's wand now glowed with physical enhancement runes rather than elemental fire, and her strikes—while not as deadly as Grimm's mutations—managed to drive the worms back. Millie's ice magic proved more effective than expected; the cold seemed to slow the creatures, their crystalline forms growing sluggish when exposed to freezing temperatures.
"They don't like the cold," Millie observed, her voice steady despite the chaos. She raised both hands, and a wall of jagged ice erupted from the dimensional substrate—impossible, yet happening. "I can hold them here, but not for long."
"Long enough," Grimm said. He had reached the anchor point—a stable pocket of dimensional space where the rules of reality held more firmly. "Kael, status."
"Shoulder's... not good." Kael's face was pale, sweat beading on his forehead despite the void's unnatural chill. "The bite carries some kind of dimensional poison. My healing potions aren't working."
"Because they're not designed for dimensional toxins." Grimm's mind raced, calculating options. They were outnumbered, outmatched in the worms' native environment. Retreat was the logical choice—return to the Academy, report the nest's location, let a full expeditionary force handle the cleanup.
But retreat meant leaving the nest intact. Meant allowing the dimensional instability to grow. Meant admitting failure.
Grimm didn't fail.
"Lyra," Grimm said, his voice low and urgent. "While you were documenting, did you notice anything unusual about the nest's energy signature?"
Lyra's eyes widened behind her spectacles. "There was... a secondary pulse. Deeper, more concentrated. I thought it was just interference, but—"
"It's not interference," Grimm finished. "There's something larger in there. Something that controls the swarm."
Kael gritted his teeth, forcing himself to sit up straighter. "A queen?"
"Or the closest thing these creatures have to one." Grimm turned to Millie, studying her face. "New plan. Lyra, stay with Kael. Keep the worms off them. Millie—" he paused, "—you're with me. We're going to the nest."
Millie's eyes widened. "Just the two of us?"
"The worms are drawn to movement and heat. A smaller group will attract less attention." Grimm paused, studying her face. "Unless you're not ready."
Something flashed in Millie's expression—pride, perhaps, or the refusal to be seen as weak. "I'm ready."
"Then let's move."
They slipped away from the anchor point while Lyra held the line, her enhanced strikes creating just enough space for Grimm and Millie to vanish into the dimensional currents. The nest awaited, pulsing with violet light in the distance.
And somewhere in the darkness between here and there, something else watched.
Something that wasn't a worm.
The nest was worse than Grimm had imagined.
Not a simple cluster of Void Worms, but a sprawling complex of crystalline structures that defied geometry—tunnels that looped back on themselves, chambers that existed in multiple locations simultaneously, a central core that pulsed with the violet light of concentrated dimensional energy.
And everywhere, worms. Dozens of them. Hundreds.
"We need to destroy the core," Grimm said, his voice barely audible over the ambient hum of the nest. "That's what anchors them here. Without it, they'll dissipate back into the dimensional currents."
"How do we reach it?" Millie asked.
She wasn't looking at the core. She was looking at the worms—at the way they moved, the patterns in their seemingly random writhing. Her ice-blue eyes tracked individual creatures, noting their paths, their behaviors.
"There's a pattern," she said slowly. "They're not just wandering. They're patrolling. Guarding specific routes."
Grimm followed her gaze. She was right. The worms moved in circuits, protecting certain pathways while ignoring others. It was almost... organized.
"A hive mind," he realized. "They're connected through the core. That's how they coordinate."
"Then if we can distract them..." Millie trailed off, but Grimm understood.
"You want to draw them away."
"My ice magic affects them. Slows them down." Millie turned to face him, and for the first time, Grimm saw the full weight of what she'd been carrying. Not just her family's legacy, but her own need to prove that she was more than a declining bloodline's last hope. "But it's not just the cold, Grimm. My family's magic—it doesn't just lower temperature. It imposes the concept of stillness, of frozen stasis. Even dimensional energy can be... paused, if only for a moment."
Grimm studied her, understanding dawning. The Frostwhisper legacy wasn't merely elemental magic—it was conceptual magic, touching the fundamental nature of reality itself. "That's why it works on them. You're not just freezing their bodies. You're freezing their existence."
"For brief moments, yes." Millie raised her hands, and frost began to form in the air around her—not just cold, but something deeper. The essence of ice, the concept of freezing made manifest. "I can give you ten minutes. Maybe fifteen."
"Millie—"
"Trust me, Grimm." Her eyes met his, and there was no hesitation in them. No fear. Only that quiet confidence he'd noticed earlier, now fully revealed. "Let me do this."
He wanted to argue. The logical part of his mind cataloged all the reasons this was a bad idea—all the ways it could go wrong, all the probabilities of failure. But another part, the part that had recognized something of himself in her determination, simply nodded.
"Fifteen minutes," he said. "Then I return, regardless of whether the core is destroyed."
"Fifteen minutes," she agreed.
Then she moved.
Millie had always been skilled with ice magic—her family heritage ensured that—but this was different. The frost didn't merely form; it flowed, spiraling through the dimensional gap like frozen lightning, each crystal precisely placed, each barrier calculated to redirect rather than merely block. She wasn't casting spells; she was conducting a symphony of stillness, and the Void Worms were her unwilling audience.
The worms reacted instantly, drawn by the cold and the movement. Dozens of them converged on her position, their crystalline bodies reflecting the light of her magic in a thousand fractured rainbows.
Rather than retreating, she charged through—dodging between the worms, using her ice barriers to redirect their attacks, turning their own numbers against them as they collided in their frenzy to reach her. She was smaller than them, faster, her ice magic giving her purchase on the dimensional substrate where they slipped and slid.
Grimm watched for three precious seconds, confirming that she could handle herself. Then he turned and sprinted toward the core.
The path was clearer than expected—Millie's distraction had drawn most of the guards away. But as he approached the central chamber, Grimm felt the dimensional energy intensify, pressing against his mutations like water pressure at depth.
The guardian was waiting.
It wasn't a Void Worm. Not exactly. It was... evolved. Larger than the others, its crystalline form more complex, more structured. Where the ordinary worms were translucent, this one was opaque, its surface etched with patterns that hurt to look at—dimensional runes, Grimm realized, spontaneously generated by exposure to concentrated void energy.
A Void Worm Queen. Or the closest approximation this dimension could produce.
"So," Grimm said, his mutated claws extending to their full length, "you're the anchor."
The Queen didn't respond—couldn't respond, lacking anything resembling intelligence. But it understood threat. It understood prey.
It lunged.
The battle was brutal, fought in the space between heartbeats. The Queen was fast—faster than the ordinary worms, its evolved form granting it speed and strength that pushed Grimm's mutations to their limit. Its crystalline teeth tore through his robes, left shallow wounds that burned with dimensional poison.
But Grimm had fought in the dimensional gap before. Had evolved his mutations specifically for this environment. He understood the currents, the flows, the way reality bent and twisted in this space between spaces.
He let the Queen's momentum carry it past him, then struck at the joint where its not-flesh met the crystalline armor of its back. His claws sank deep, and the Queen shrieked—that skull-piercing sound amplified a hundredfold.
It thrashed, throwing Grimm across the chamber. He hit the wall—except it wasn't a wall, was it, but simply a boundary where dimensional energy concentrated—and rebounded, his body already healing the damage through accelerated mutation.
"Eight minutes," he muttered, counting in his head. Millie's time was running out.
The thought carried a weight he didn't examine—couldn't examine, not now. He filed it for later, for the silence that would follow victory or defeat, when there would be space to acknowledge that her survival had become... relevant. Not merely useful. Relevant.
He couldn't afford to play defensive. Not anymore.
Grimm charged.
The Queen met him, and for a moment, they were locked in a struggle that transcended physical combat—will against will, adaptation against evolution, a single wizard's determination against the endless hunger of the void.
Then Grimm found the opening. A moment of imbalance, a shift in the dimensional currents that left the Queen vulnerable. His claws struck true, piercing the crystalline structure that served as its heart.
The Queen shrieked one final time—and dissolved.
Not just died, but dissolved, its entire form breaking down into raw dimensional energy that was immediately absorbed by the core. The structure pulsed, unstable now, its anchor severed.
Grimm didn't hesitate. He struck the core with everything he had—mutated claws, enhanced strength, the full force of his Alchemy Mutation focused into a single devastating blow.
The core cracked.
Light exploded outward, violet and blinding, and Grimm felt himself being thrown—no, pulled—by the collapsing dimensional structure. He grabbed for purchase, found none, and surrendered to the current.
He had to reach Millie. Had to—
The world went white.
Grimm came back to awareness slowly, like surfacing from deep water. The first thing he registered was taste—dust and old magic, the familiar mineral tang of the Wizard World replacing the void's metallic absence. Then touch: stone beneath his back, solid and real, gravity behaving as it should. Then sound: Millie's voice, strained but alive, cutting through the ringing aftermath of dimensional collapse.
He was lying on something solid—actual stone, not dimensional substrate. The air tasted of dust and old magic, the familiar scents of the Wizard World. He had been expelled from the gap, then, thrown back into conventional reality by the collapsing nest.
"Grimm!"
Millie's voice. He forced his eyes open, his mutations already receding as his body recognized the return to normal space. She was kneeling beside him, her robes torn, her face pale but intact. Alive.
"You're hurt," she said, reaching for him.
"I'm fine." He sat up, ignoring the protests of his abused body. "The nest?"
"Destroyed. I felt it collapse—the dimensional energy released all at once." She paused, her expression shifting. "We should move. The explosion will have drawn attention."
She was right. The dimensional rift they'd used to enter the gap was still visible, but it was unstable now, flickering like a dying flame. And somewhere in the distance, Grimm could sense magical signatures approaching—multiple wizards, moving fast.
"Help me up," he said.
Millie did, her grip firm despite her own exhaustion. They had made it. Against all odds, against the swarm of Void Worms and the Queen, they had destroyed the nest and survived.
But survival was only half the battle.
The approaching wizards came into view—five of them, moving in formation. Their robes marked them as Academy personnel, but their formation was too precise, too military for a simple patrol. This was a response team, dispatched to investigate the dimensional disturbance.
Grimm recognized the leader immediately.
Mina.
The Sun Child had changed in the months since their last encounter. She still carried herself with that innate arrogance, the confidence of someone born with exceptional talent who had never known what it meant to struggle. But there was something else now, something Grimm couldn't quite identify. A tightness around her eyes, perhaps. A wariness in her posture.
She recognized him too. He saw it in the slight widening of her pupils, the almost imperceptible hesitation in her stride.
"Grimm," she said, her voice carrying that particular tone she used with him—dismissive, yet forced. As if she had to remind herself to look down on him. "Of course it would be you."
"Mina." Grimm kept his own voice neutral, professional. "We destroyed a Void Worm nest in the dimensional gap. The threat has been neutralized."
"Neutralized?" Mina's gaze swept over them—taking in their torn robes, their injuries, the residual dimensional energy still crackling around Grimm's mutated hands. "You destroyed a nest with a four-person squad?"
"Two-person strike team," Grimm corrected. "The others held the perimeter."
Mina's eyes flicked to Millie, and something complicated passed across her face. Recognition, certainly—they had been apprentices together, had competed in the same trials. But also... assessment. As if she were seeing Millie for the first time, truly seeing her.
"You've grown," Mina said to Millie. Not a compliment, exactly. More an acknowledgment of fact.
"So have you," Millie replied, her voice steady. "Though some things don't change."
The barb was subtle, but Mina caught it. Her lips tightened, and for a moment, Grimm thought she might respond in kind. But then her gaze returned to Grimm, and the moment passed.
"The Academy will want a full report," she said. "Dimensional incidents are serious business. There will be an inquiry."
"There always is." Grimm paused, studying her. "You didn't have to come yourself. A response team could have handled the investigation."
Mina's jaw tightened. "I was in the area."
A lie. Or at least, not the whole truth. Grimm could see it in the way she wouldn't quite meet his eyes, the slight flush creeping up her neck. She had come because she had sensed the dimensional disturbance, had recognized his magical signature in the chaos.
She had come because some part of her, despite everything, still saw him as a rival.
"The Fire Fusion Orb," Millie said suddenly, her voice cutting through the tension. "That's what you're really after, isn't it?"
Mina's head snapped toward her, and this time there was no hiding her reaction. Shock, quickly suppressed. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"The Blood Sail Alliance has been asking questions about it," Millie continued, her tone conversational, almost casual. "Rumors say it's hidden somewhere in the dimensional gap. That the Void Worms were drawn here because of it."
Grimm kept his expression neutral, but his mind raced. The Fire Fusion Orb—a legendary artifact, said to contain the essence of solar fire compressed into physical form. He had heard the rumors, of course. Everyone had. But he hadn't connected it to the Void Worm nest.
If Millie was right...
"The nest is destroyed," he said, his voice carefully controlled. "If the Orb was there, it's gone now."
Mina's eyes met his, and for a moment, they simply stared at each other. Two rivals, bound by competition and something else—respect, perhaps, or the mutual recognition of shared ambition.
"Then I suppose," Mina said slowly, "that we'll both be looking elsewhere."
She turned, her response team falling into formation behind her. But at the edge of the clearing, she paused and looked back.
"Grimm." Her voice was softer now, almost hesitant. "Be careful. The dimensional gap... it's changing. Something is stirring in the deep places. Something that makes Void Worms look like pets."
Then she was gone, her team vanishing into the trees, leaving Grimm and Millie alone with the dying rift and the weight of unspoken warnings.
They found Lyra and Kael two hundred meters from the rift, sheltered in a natural depression that had protected them from the worst of the dimensional backlash. Kael was conscious but weak, his shoulder wound stabilized by Lyra's emergency ministrations.
"You destroyed it," Lyra said, her voice hushed with something like awe. She pushed her spectacles up her nose with a trembling hand, the scholar in her warring with the apprentice who had just survived her first real battle. "I felt the collapse. The entire nest, just... gone. Like a lantern snuffed by winter wind."
"Grimm destroyed it," Millie corrected. "I just bought time."
"You bought victory," Grimm said. He was sitting on a flat stone, his mutations fully receded now, his body aching with the familiar exhaustion of overextended Alchemy Mutation. "The Queen was guarding the core. Without your distraction, I never would have reached it."
Millie didn't respond, but he saw the slight straightening of her shoulders, the way her chin lifted. Recognition. Acknowledgment.
She had proven herself today. Not just to him, but to herself.
"We should return to the Academy," Kael said, his voice strained. The former mercenary's pragmatism reasserting itself through the pain. "Report the nest's destruction. Get me to a proper healer before this dimensional poison spreads."
"Agreed." Grimm stood, his body protesting every movement. "Lyra, help Kael. Millie, you're with me."
They moved out, following the trail back toward Academy territory. The forest seemed almost impossibly normal after the dimensional gap—solid ground, consistent gravity, air that tasted of pine and earth rather than void and ozone. Somewhere in the canopy, a jay called out in the old tongue of the northern woods—a sound Grimm hadn't heard since childhood, when his mother would point to the birds and say they carried messages between worlds.
He almost smiled. Almost.
But Grimm couldn't shake the feeling that something had changed. That the encounter with Mina, the mention of the Fire Fusion Orb, the warning about the deep places—all of it pointed toward something larger, something moving beneath the surface of their world.
"She was right," Millie said quietly, falling into step beside him. "About the gap changing. I felt it too, near the end. Something... watching. Something older than the worms."
Grimm nodded. He had felt it too, in the final moments before the core's destruction. A presence in the dimensional currents, vast and ancient and utterly alien.
"The dimensional gap is deeper than we understand," he said. "Layers upon layers. The Void Worms are surface dwellers, scavengers feeding on the edges of reality. But below them..."
He trailed off, unwilling to speculate further. Not here, not now.
"The Fire Fusion Orb," Millie said after a moment. "Do you think it exists?"
"Legendary artifacts usually have some basis in fact." Grimm considered. "Compressed solar fire, capable of burning through dimensional barriers... if it exists, it would be invaluable. For research, if nothing else."
"And if the Blood Sail Alliance is looking for it..."
"Then we'll need to find it first." Grimm's voice hardened. "The Alliance doesn't collect artifacts for scholarly purposes. Whatever they want with the Orb, it won't benefit the Academy."
Millie nodded, her expression thoughtful. They walked in silence for a while, the forest giving way to cultivated land as they approached Academy territory. The afternoon sun cast long shadows through the trees—shadows that seemed to Grimm's tired eyes to move with purposes of their own.
"Grimm." Millie's voice was soft, almost hesitant. "Thank you. For trusting me. For letting me prove myself."
He glanced at her, surprised. "You didn't need to prove anything. You already had my trust."
"Maybe." She smiled, small and private. "But I needed to prove it to myself."
Grimm understood that. Better than most.
They crested the final hill, and the Academy's towers came into view—black stone rising against the sky, ancient and enduring. Home, for whatever that word meant to people like them.
"The inquiry will be tomorrow," Grimm said. "Get some rest. We'll need clear heads."
"And after?"
He looked at her—at this apprentice who had become a warrior, this burdened girl who had found her own strength. Then he looked back at the distant horizon, where the dimensional gap lurked beyond perception, hiding its secrets in the spaces between worlds.
"After," he said, "we find the Fire Fusion Orb. Before the Alliance does. Before whatever's stirring in the deep places decides to surface."
Millie nodded, and together they walked toward the towers, toward the next challenge, toward the endless pursuit of power and truth that defined the wizard's path.
Behind them, unseen, the dimensional rift pulsed once—violet light flickering in patterns that might have been warning, might have been invitation.
The void was waiting.
And it was hungry.