There was no light.
No breath.
No world.
Only the faint, hollow echo of her heartbeat drifting through an endless, ink-black void.
Amaya floated in nothingness, weightless, suspended like a forgotten whisper between life and death. Her body felt distant, dissolving. For the first time since entering the Beastworld, she felt no fear… because she felt nothing at all.
Then—
Thrum.
The sound hit her like a pulse through eternity. It wasn't her own heartbeat. It was deeper—older—reverberating through the very marrow of existence.
Thrum.
The void quivered.
A sliver of golden light cracked open beneath her feet.
Amaya barely had time to inhale before—
CRACK.
The darkness shattered.
And she fell.
She fell through flames that curled like ancient runes. She fell through stars—countless, burning, whispering secrets she could almost understand. She fell through memory, through blood, through time that did not belong to her.
Then—
Her feet hit solid ground.
