Falling feels different this time.
It is not chaos. Not terror. Not the violent pull of a realm collapsing under its own contradictions. It is silence. Weightless silence, soft as breath.
Jax’s grip is iron around my wrist. My fingers lock around his with equal desperation. We plummet together through darkness that is not dark at all, a silver void streaked with faint lines of blue light that move like rivers beneath transparent glass.
Our bodies tumble. Gravity stops behaving. The Core dissolves above us like smoke thinning into moonlight.
Then everything slows.
The descent shifts into something gentler. My feet find ground I did not see coming. My knees bend, absorbing impact, but the landing is soft. Jax lands beside me, crouched, his wolf still half present in the tense way his mu
