The realm around me pulsed like a living heartbeat. The dark glass beneath my feet rippled in silver lines, shifting every time I exhaled. My body felt weightless, suspended between existence and something far older. The air smelled like cold stone and memory, a scent that did not belong to the living world.
Eidos stood several steps away, his form sharper than before. The mist that made up his body did not move like smoke anymore. It draped and folded like cloth, reacting to every tiny shift of his posture. His eyes were two pale fractures of light, watching me with unsettling patience.
“You feel it,” he murmured, voice soft as a whisper but echoing like a canyon. “Your pulse is unraveling. Every heartbeat brings you closer to collapse.”
“I am not collapsing,” I said through clenched t
