The air didn't shift.
That was the first thing Liora noticed.
After everything—the alignment, the clarity, the way reality had begun to unfold before it fully happened—there had always been a pattern. A flow. A sequence she could follow.
Now—
There was nothing.
Not silence.
Not stillness.
Just… absence.
Cairis was speaking.
She could see it—his lips moving, his posture steady, his gaze fixed on her with that same controlled intensity he had been holding onto since everything started slipping out of his grasp.
But something felt wrong.
"…this isn't stable," he was saying.
His voice was firm, grounded, trying to reassert structure into something that no longer responded to it. "Whatever you think you're experiencing—"
Liora blinked.
And suddenly—
"—it's going to break."
She stilled.
The words landed.
But something between them—
Was gone.
