Endless. Hungry. Wrong in ways that made my bones ache.
And something else.
Movement. Attention.
The Void was not empty. It was full, teeming with things that had no names, no forms, existing in states that violated everything I understood about existence.
They felt the breach.
They came.
Claws scraped at the threshold. Void-creatures pressed against the opening, testing its edges, searching for a way through.
I held them back.
Every lesson Lyralei had driven into me crystallized. Breathing. Focus. The Veil responded to intent, not force. I didn’t push, I shaped.
Each time a creature tried to break through, I sent it hurtling back while keeping the breach open.
The Void-creatures screamed. I felt their unfiltered rage, their hunger to rip through our dimension.
I held.
The Devourer thrashed within his bindings, understanding at last. His mouth opened, trying to reach into my mind again, but his time had come.
I pushed.
The bindings collapsed inward, compressing the Devourer into a space smaller than a grain of sand. Then I pulled, not with force, but with precision, opening a channel through the Veil that led only one way.
The Devourer tore free from Aeron’s body.
For one heartbeat, I saw his true form, vast, impossible, something that should never exist in this world.
Then the Veil took him.
Pulled him with a force that could have claimed the entire world if it wished.
The Void swallowed him whole.
At the threshold, the creatures surged, trying to force their way through, trying to follow, to break into our world.
I sealed the breach.
Not gently. With everything I had left in my broken, bleeding body. The Veil responded, folding space back into itself, mending the wound I had opened.
The threshold snapped shut with a sound like reality itself exhaling.
The screams cut off.
Silence flooded the throne room.
The oppressive weight lifted. The death magic that had made breathing an act of defiance dissipated like smoke in wind.
Soldiers collapsed where they stood, puppet-strings severed. They hit the ground gasping, confused, human again.
Throughout the castle, I felt the same shift ripple outward. Servants stumbled as their minds cleared. Guards dropped weapons with shaking hands.
The corruption that had spread through the capital like a plague burned away, leaving only exhausted, terrified people behind.
