White.
Endless, searing white.
Manraj forced one breath in, then another, each inhale scraping like sand inside his lungs. The Root-plane was silent—not peaceful silent, but surgical silent.
Every sound was being processed, measured, judged.
He wiped blood from his lip, staggering forward.
"Zoya!"
His voice bounced off the nothingness, distorted and swallowed like it was being dissected before echoing back.
"ZOYA!"
No answer.
Only the faint hum of the Root's will.
He felt the countdown flicker—
19 → 19 → 19
Stable.
But wrong.
Without Zoya, it felt… unanchored. Like the number wasn't tracking distance anymore—it was tracking loss.
Manraj clenched his fists.
"I'm not staying here. I'm not letting her die down there."
The Root answered at once.
A voice layered, ageless, crystalline:
"THE SHIELD HAS BEEN CLAIMED BY THE UNDER-ROOT."
Manraj's entire body went cold.
"No. No—she fell because of me."
A ripple of golden light pulsed through the infinite white, circling him.
"SHE CHOSE TO ENTER.
SHE CHOSE TO PROTECT THE UNFINISHED."
Manraj's voice cracked.
"I didn't choose any of this!"
The Root responded:
"UNFINISHED THINGS DO NOT CHOOSE."
He froze.
Then he snarled:
"I just did."
The floor of the Root-plane quivered beneath his feet as if startled—like it hadn't expected defiance.
A second voice joined the first—harsher, older, almost broken:
"THE SHIELD CANNOT BE RECOVERED.
SHE IS BENEATH THE THRESHOLD."
Manraj stepped forward.
"And I'm going down."
The Root-plane trembled.
A deep rumble shuddered through the white, forming cracks—small fractures, like lightning trapped under glass.
The Root did not like that answer.
"THE UNDER-ROOT DEVOURS.
YOU CANNOT FOLLOW."
He growled.
"Watch me."
Light exploded around him—
Not an attack.
A warning.
A wave of brilliance slammed into him, pinning him to the ground, crushing the air from his lungs.
He choked, forcing the words out:
"Let me go."
The Root's voice sharpened.
"THE VESSEL MUST NOT DESCEND.
THE VOID CANNOT TOUCH ITS SHADOW."
Manraj's vision blurred.
Something old and cold stirred inside the white—
A presence he had felt once before.
The silhouette.
Azhar's absence.
It flickered above him like a glitch in light.
Half-formed.
Half-broken.
Watching.
Manraj pushed himself up onto one elbow.
"You… fought them once," he whispered. "You walked the cut-site. You broke every rule they made."
The outline flickered again—like a nod.
Manraj's jaw tightened.
"If you believed I deserved a choice—then give me one."
The silhouette stretched—
Then split—like it was tearing a page from itself.
A single thread of shadow detached, curling through the white like a crack in perfection.
The Root roared.
"STOP."
The thread touched the ground.
And the floor beneath Manraj shattered.
White light burst upward.
Dark gravity yanked downward.
The Root-plane and Under-Root tore apart around him in opposite directions.
Manraj was falling.
Not into the Under-Root.
Not yet.
He was falling between them.
Into the rift Azhar left behind.
The Root screamed in fury.
The Under-Root screamed in hunger.
Manraj screamed one name—
"ZOYA!"
And the chapter ends with him vanishing into the void that belonged to neither side.