Thalion stumbled out of the collapsing portal and onto solid ground that felt wrong beneath his boots. The air was different. The sky was different. Everything around him carried the familiar weight of the world he had once known, yet none of it felt real. He had been expelled.
That much he understood, of all those who had entered that strange realm with him, he alone had been allowed to leave.
The rest were gone.
He took two unsteady steps forward before dropping to one knee. His hands trembled as he pressed them against the dirt, something fundamental was missing.
He reached inward out of long habit, searching for the familiar weight of the souls he had carried for years—the remnants of those he had consumed, the fragments that had sustained his power and his sanity in equal measure.
There was nothing.
The space inside him where those souls had resided was hollow.
Empty. They had been set free or taken, and the absence left a cold, aching void that no amount of breathing could fill. That should have been impossible. No force he knew of could strip a being of every soul they carried without destroying them in the process. Yet here he was, alive and emptied.
Thalion clutched his head with both hands as a sharp, invasive pain bloomed behind his eyes. Memories of the ocean realm, the stone child, the shrine, the judgment—all of it flickered like dying candle flames. He tried to hold onto them, to force the images into clarity, but they slipped further away with every heartbeat.
"S-Something is wrong..." he muttered through gritted teeth.
The thought itself began to unravel before he could finish examining it. He remembered standing before the stone child. Then the memory softened at the edges and lost its shape. He remembered the sensation of being judged.
That too grew distant and vague. Even the faces of the men who had followed him into that place started to blur. Names he had known for years became difficult to grasp.
His breathing turned shallow. The ground tilted beneath him even though he had not moved. .
He tried to stand and failed. One hand remained pressed against his skull as if physical pressure could keep the memories from draining away.
It did not work, the fading continued at a steady, merciless pace.
Thalion’s vision narrowed. The colors of the world around him drained toward gray. He could no longer recall why he had entered the portal in the first place.
The purpose that had driven him felt important, but the details refused to stay in place.
Each time he reached for them, they dissolved further.
His body finally gave out.
Thalion collapsed forward onto the dirt, consciousness slipping away as the last coherent fragments of what he had experienced continued to fade into nothing. The empty space where the souls had once resided remained silent. Whatever had returned him to this world had not done so without a price.
-
Ylva stood near the edge of the settlement’s inner courtyard, one hand resting against the low stone wall as she stared out toward the treeline.
The morning air was calm. Birds moved through the branches as usual.
Nothing looked out of place yet something sat wrong in her chest, a low and persistent pressure that refused to fade no matter how she tried to dismiss it.
She did not know what had happened. She only knew that something had.
Mae approached from behind, wiping her hands on a cloth after helping with the morning preparations. She stopped a few steps away when she noticed Ylva’s expression.
"What’s wrong?" Mae asked.
Ylva shook her head slightly and forced a small smile. "It’s nothing. Just a feeling. I’m probably overthinking it."
Mae did not look convinced. She stepped closer and glanced in the same direction Ylva had been staring. After a moment she spoke again, quieter this time.
"I have it too."
Ylva turned to her, surprised. She had assumed the unease was only her own. Hearing Mae voice the same sensation made the pressure in her chest tighten further.
Before either of them could say more, Tauriel joined them. Her usual composed demeanor was strained at the edges. She looked between the two women and then out toward the trees as well.
"You both feel it," Tauriel said. It was not a question.
Ylva and Mae exchanged a glance. Tauriel’s confirmation removed any remaining doubt that this was coincidence. Three of them sensing the same wrongness at the same time meant something had shifted, even if none of them could yet name it.
"I don’t know what it is," Ylva admitted. "It started not long ago. Like something distant broke, or changed."
Tauriel nodded once. "I’ll check the barrier. The parameters. If anything crossed through, the wards should show a disruption."
The three of them stood in silence for a moment longer. The shared feeling of wrongness had settled over all of them now, too consistent to ignore and too vague to act on with any clear direction. Tauriel was already turning toward the barrier markers at the edge of the settlement.
Ylva watched her go, then looked back at Mae. The unease had not lessened. If anything, the knowledge that the others felt it too only made the sensation sharper. Somewhere beyond their walls, something had changed. They did not yet know what it was, only that it was significant enough for the three of them to sense it at once.
And that was enough to put all of them on edge.
Tauriel made her way to the edge of the settlement with steady steps, though the shared unease from earlier still lingered in her chest. The barrier markers stood where they always had, carved stones etched with layered protective runes that had held firm for months. She just came here but could tell this barrier was basically impenetrable. Nothing should have been able to cross, even if they had the power to do so.
As she approached the perimeter near the main exit point, she slowed. Something was wrong with the air itself, like it was distorted.
A distortion hung just beyond the outermost marker. It was subtle at first glance—little more than a faint shimmer, like heat rising from stone on a hot day.
Yet the longer she looked, the more wrong it became.
The space within the shimmer bent in ways that made her eyes ache. Light did not pass through it correctly. The trees visible on the other side appeared slightly skewed, as if viewed through imperfect glass.
Tauriel had never seen a tear between realms with her own eyes. She had only heard the reports from a few merchants here or there and the others brought back, fragmented accounts of oceans that should not exist and creatures that judged without mercy.
Standing before this distortion now, she first assumed it was some form of forced entry spell—an advanced spatial working meant to bypass the barrier. That theory lasted only a few seconds.
A strange aura began to emanate from the distortion. It was not mana in any form she recognized. It carried no elemental signature, no structured weaving. Instead it pressed against her mind with a cold, invasive weight. Complete and utter dread flooded her body without warning. Her heart began to race so hard she could feel it in her throat. Breathing became difficult, each inhale shallow and insufficient. The instinct to flee rose so sharply it overrode every trained response she possessed.
Every part of her screamed that remaining here was dangerous. That whatever existed on the other side of that shimmer was not meant to be perceived by the living.
Tauriel turned and ran.
Her footsteps struck the ground in rapid, uneven rhythm as she put distance between herself and the barrier. She did not look back. The dread clung to her like a physical film, coating her thoughts and making her hands shake even after the settlement walls came back into view.
She kept running until the pressure lessened enough for coherent thought to return because she knew with Jason not being here, there was nothing that could be done against any threats.
Something had crossed, or was trying to cross. The barrier had not stopped it completely. And whatever it was, it had recognized her presence long enough to project that crushing aura of dread.
Tauriel forced herself to slow as she neared the courtyard again. She needed to warn Ylva and Mae. The feeling the three of them had shared earlier was no longer vague.
It had a source. And that source was waiting just outside their defenses.
But something told her, it could get in if it truly wanted to.
Tauriel knew she had had warn the others but before she could get too far, she saw a strange creature appear right beside her and whispered to her in a language she didn’t recognize.