Eleanor did not know how long she drifted in that emptiness after the thread snapped. Time was a strange thing in the Interlace. It bent like the walls of the chambers, stretched like the strands above her, collapsed like breath caught in her throat. At some point, her mind latched onto something familiar, something she had studied for years inside the lecture halls of Lumenrift. When her body could not move and her veins still burned from the Nullith's touch, her thoughts returned to the beginnings.
The Interlace. The first lesson every Laceliner received. She remembered the pale stone walls of the East Hall, the diagrams carved into boards, the voices of professors repeating what had already been written into every textbook. The Interlace was not a world. It was not a heaven or a hell. It was the stitched void between universes, the place where boundaries pressed and touched, where borders frayed and thinned. Most scholars described it as a seam. Some argued it was a membrane. Eleanor preferred the word she first heard as a child: fabric. Something that could be tugged and torn, and sometimes patched.
She remembered the date recited in almost every examination: the first documented contact in 1624, when Willem Hale, a natural Resonance Scholar, described how light in a closed chamber bent unnaturally during his resonance experiments. He thought at first it was a flaw in his instruments. But the effect repeated, and eventually the chamber walls had blurred and he had seen strands of light extending into nowhere. He had no language for it, only calling it the between-place. It was later generations who named it Interlace.
Eleanor's mind, still trembling from her own failed crossings, clung to the history like it was scripture. The compass had not come first. That invention arrived centuries later, after countless lives were lost to blind crossings. What came first was the resonance. Hale's discovery that every body, every object, hummed with a frequency that could, if amplified, disturb the boundary of its universe. The resonance was violent, dangerous, and for decades scholars believed no one should attempt it. And yet they did, and some vanished entirely, and a few returned changed, scarred with markings across their bodies that had not been there before.
The marks became the key. What later generations called the multisigil. Not designed but found, etched into the flesh of survivors. A living brand that carried the frequency of their origin universe. A proof of identity and a tether to return. Eleanor remembered her own multisigil forming during her childhood initiation. The process involved exposing her body to amplified resonance, a searing heat against her collarbone while her mother watched with pride and expectation. The scar never faded. It pulsed when she practiced. It burned when she failed. It bound her to her universe but it also promised passage if she mastered the art.
The compass, she recalled, had been created only two centuries ago. A device of glass and metal, designed to orient the user in the Interlace. Without it, one could drift endlessly, unable to find the resonance of their variant selves. With it, the strands could be measured, their angles calculated, the probability of anchoring improved. Still dangerous, but less like suicide.
And anchoring. The lecture words came back with painful clarity. The act of stitching one's own resonance into that of a variant self. Travel was not stepping across a doorframe. It was weaving into a version of yourself who already existed in another universe. Fail to find them, and the thread collapsed. Force the thread without alignment, and the body tore apart. Eleanor had read those accounts, but still she had believed she would succeed, because she was Elizabeth's daughter.
Now, floating in the void with the echo of the Nullith's grip still burning in her arm, she wondered how foolish she had been. She had memorized every origin, every theory, every formula Lumenrift had drilled into her. She could recite them like prayer. But recitation did not save her when the threads trembled, when the shadow pressed close, when her hands were empty of instruments. Knowledge had always felt like a shield. Tonight it felt like glass shattering in her hands.
Eleanor woke with her cheek pressed against stone that smelled of rust and mold. For a long second she did not move. She only listened. No wails. No screaming. No shattering glass. The silence was so complete that she almost believed she had dreamt it all. She lifted her head, the stiffness in her neck making her wince. Her eyes caught the narrow walls on either side, brick damp with dew, shadows stacked high above her like a cage. She was in an alleyway.
She blinked hard, rubbed her eyes, waiting for the blur to clear. Maybe it was morning already. Maybe she had collapsed after running. Maybe the monster, the swarm, all of it had been some twisted hallucination from exhaustion. She reached for her clothes, hoping they might prove it had only been a nightmare.
But her coat was scorched at the shoulder where her multisigil had burned through it. Her palms were raw, scraped as if she had clawed at glass. Her hair was tangled and matted with dust. The smell of smoke still clung to her skin. No. This was not a dream. Everything had happened.
She pushed herself up, her knees shaking under her weight. Then it came—a flicker of light ahead, the same shimmer she had seen in the chamber before the Nullith broke through. Her whole body froze. Panic flared in her chest like fire rushing up her throat. She knew that flicker. She knew what it meant.
The Nullith could follow her. It had followed her into the University. It could follow her here.
She did not wait for its shape to form. She bolted out of the alley, her boots slipping against the wet pavement as she ran, lungs aching, every muscle screaming for her to stop. She didn't stop. She burst out into a wider street—and her breath caught.
This was not her city.
The buildings towered sleek and tall, steel framed with glass that reflected the morning light. They did not carry the weight of old stone halls or carved sigils like those around the University. They were clean, modern, efficient, each corner sharpened to exactness. The air smelled different too—no woodsmoke, no incense from shrines, no iron tang from the Resonance Chambers. Instead there was the faint stench of machines, oil, something sterile. Carriages did not roll on the streets here. Long cars of metal skimmed the ground without horses. Lights blinked above crosswalks in red and green, pulsing with an order Eleanor did not understand.
People moved past her, rushing, carrying cups and bags, speaking into small glowing rectangles pressed to their ears. They wore no anchor rings. No sigils gleamed on their skin. They did not even glance at her as if she were invisible.
Her mind spun. Could it be? Had she actually crossed? Without a compass, without her anchor ring, without even focusing on a thread? She had tried so many times with instruments and failed. Yet here she was, standing in a world that was not her own. Her hands trembled. She looked down at her multisigil still faintly glowing against her chest, the scarred skin pulsing like a reminder.
Did the Nullith drag her here? Did its presence twist the Interlace and force her through a thread she could not have found on her own? The thought sickened her. If the Nullith had power over her crossing, then every step she took was not hers at all.
She backed against the wall, her breath quick and shallow. She needed to understand where exactly she was. She forced herself to look again, past the strangers and the cars and the strange signs that meant nothing to her. She searched for landmarks, for something familiar, for any hint of home.
And then she realized.
The University should have stood less than a mile east from where she now stood. Her own house should have been only a few minutes away by foot. She turned in the direction where the spires of the eastern hall should have pierced the skyline. Nothing was there. Only more glass towers and roads paved with glowing strips.
Her heart hammered. She was standing in the same place, yet it was not the same world.
Eleanor steadied herself against the wall, her hand pressed flat against the brick as if the roughness of it might stop her from spinning apart. She had to breathe slower. She had to think clearly. The world around her looked nothing like what she knew, yet the ground beneath her still felt real. If she had truly crossed, then the place she stood on should mirror her own city, even if altered. That thought anchored her.
Eleanor walked until her legs burned and the city's sounds pressed against her skull. The deeper she went, the more she sought some thread of familiarity. She scanned every arch, every wall, every spire that reached upward, hoping for something to remind her of home. Her University was supposed to sit here. If this world mirrored hers in any way, it had to be near this place. It could not simply vanish. Things did not vanish—they shifted. She clung to that thought as her only anchor.
Then she saw it. Not the sweeping towers of marble and stone, not the carved gates that bore the seal of her University, but a massive building stretched across the block, built not of glass this time but of concrete streaked with age. The structure was long and square, its walls layered with vines that climbed upward as though trying to choke it. Above the main entrance, letters glowed in dull light. She could not read them fully, but the rhythm of their arrangement echoed the crest that once marked the Academy of Lacelines. The memory struck her. Her breath caught in her throat.
She stepped closer, her heart racing. A flag was fixed to the side of the building, but instead of the University's sigil of interwoven threads, this one bore an emblem she did not recognize. Yet its lines curved in a pattern that was unmistakably derived from the same geometry. Not copied, but transformed. It was as though this place had grown from the same root but bloomed into another form.
Eleanor's eyes stung. She pressed a hand to the wall, feeling the cool stone beneath her palm. This was it. A variant. Not her University, not the one she had lived in and studied in, but a shadow of it, reshaped by this world's own history. The gates here were iron too, though plain and rusted, without wards or sigils. She leaned against them, remembering how hers would hum faintly when she passed through, threads of resonance always at the edge of hearing.
The people moving in and out of this place carried books, some slung bags over their shoulders. Their clothes were simpler, their voices louder, their laughter unrestrained. It looked like a school. She realized it only when she caught sight of a carving above the arch. The name was not the same, but the word "Institute" lingered there, shaped by unfamiliar letters yet tied to the same tradition. It was enough. She understood. This world had its own form of the University, altered but still carrying traces of what she knew.
Her knees weakened. For a moment she thought she might collapse onto the pavement. She wanted to weep. To stand here in front of what had once been hers, changed beyond recognition yet undeniably born from the same seed—it was unbearable. She whispered to herself, as if saying it aloud would keep her steady. This was the variant. This was proof she had crossed. This was proof that her own world had not been entirely swallowed, but mirrored.
Still, the realization did not ease her chest. If the University was reshaped here, then what of her home? What of her mother? Would there be a version of Eleanor here, too, altered, carrying different memories, living a different life? The thought made her stomach twist.
She lingered by the gates for longer than she should have. Her hand pressed against the cold iron until her palm ached, as if the touch alone could answer all her questions. She knew it could not. To understand, she had to go inside. The thought made her chest tighten. The University had always been more than a building to her. It was her ambition, her future, the place that measured every part of her life. And now here it was again, changed but standing. She could not just turn away.
She pushed the gates open. They groaned under her weight, no hum of wards, no spark against her skin. The sound was heavy, unenchanted, yet it still carried the memory of the gates she once knew. Her feet carried her forward across the courtyard, where moss clung to the cracks in the stone and students gathered in small groups. Their voices rose in arguments and laughter, none of it regulated, none of it hushed by the strict order of Laceliners. Eleanor kept her head low as she walked, afraid their eyes might pierce through her, afraid they would see she did not belong.
The entrance hall was vast, though stripped of the grandeur she remembered. The ceiling was high, but instead of etched sigils or glimmering threads that danced with faint light, there were only panels of wood and plaster. Banners hung above the stairwell, bearing the strange emblem she had seen outside. It looked so simple, almost crude compared to the refined geometry of her University's crest, yet something in its angles tugged at her memory. She stared at it longer than she wanted to, trying to convince herself it was enough proof of what this place really was.
Her shoes echoed against the stone floor as she moved deeper. The sound reminded her of walking the corridors after lessons, the quiet weight of books pressing against her arms, the thrill of believing she might one day master what she studied. She had always imagined herself returning after graduation as a Laceliner, her name carved into the record of the University. Instead, here she was, wandering through an altered shell of it, stripped of its purpose, yet still undeniably connected to what she knew.
She passed through doors that opened into classrooms. Inside, rows of desks faced blackboards smeared with chalk dust. Students sat bent over notebooks, their pens scratching furiously. Eleanor stood at the threshold of one room until a teacher's glance sent her away.
She moved slowly, floor by floor, tracing the shape of her memories against the walls she found here. The architecture was altered, but the rhythm of the halls, the staircases at the same corners, the wide windows that overlooked the courtyard—it was all too familiar. She could almost close her eyes and believe she was back. Almost. But every detail reminded her she was not.
Her throat burned. She wanted to cry but forced herself to swallow it back. She was not ready to collapse here, surrounded by strangers who would never understand what she had lost. Instead, she pressed onward, testing the building itself. She needed to know whether it would keep offering her fragments of recognition or finally dissolve into something wholly unfamiliar.
When she reached the library, she froze. The doors were tall, carved with patterns too simple to be her University's, yet when she stepped inside, the silence struck her in the chest. Rows upon rows of shelves stretched outward, the air thick with dust and paper. The smell hit her, and for a moment she could not breathe. It was almost the same. Her library had been wider, grander, but the spirit of it lingered here. She walked between the shelves, fingers brushing the spines of books, feeling again the nights she had spent hunched over pages until her eyes burned, her heart swelling with the belief that knowledge could carry her anywhere.
Eleanor had not noticed she was being watched until a voice cut through the stillness of the library, steady but sharp enough to make her spine jolt.
"What are you doing here?"
Her head snapped toward the sound. A man stood a few feet away, framed by the tall doorway, his arms folded loosely as if he had been standing there long enough to measure her presence. His eyes moved over her in a way that made her skin prickle—carefully, as though he were cataloguing every detail. She followed the path of his gaze downward and understood why. Her dress was torn at the hem, dust clung to her sleeves, and her hair had half-fallen from its braid. She looked ragged, foreign, a figure dragged out of place and left exposed in the middle of this strange remnant of her University.
She straightened instinctively, as if standing taller would erase the ruin of her appearance. Her lips parted, but no explanation came. Her voice failed her when she tried to speak, and instead she found herself staring at him. His face was unassuming, marked more by thought than vanity, his dark hair falling untidily across his brow as though he had been too absorbed in work to care. His coat was practical, his shirt creased, yet there was something in the way he held himself that suggested precision, order, a man who trusted the structure of reason more than chance.
Something in him burned into her memory. She had seen this man before—or no, not this man, but someone who carried the same shape of jaw, the same concentrated gaze. She blinked hard, searching her memory, and the image leapt forward. Mr. Croft's assistant. The one who had let her into the chamber when no one else would. The one who had silently trusted her desperation and handed her the space to prove herself. Eleanor's chest tightened.
Her breath caught as the thought uncoiled fully. This was him. Not him exactly, but his reflection in this world. A variant self. She felt her pulse rise, not only from the shock of recognition but from the realization that the theory was true—what anchored a Laceliner was not only the existence of places across universes but the persistence of people, their shapes reborn again and again in altered forms. The University lived here in another skin, and so did those tied to it.
Her throat worked against the dryness gathering there. She wanted to say something, to demand why he looked at her like a trespasser when she felt she had every right to stand in the bones of what was once hers. But her voice trembled, betraying her before she could hide it.
"I…" She faltered, forcing the words through. "I was just… looking."
He tilted his head slightly, his gaze moving once more from her ruined clothes back to her face. She felt pinned under his scrutiny.
Eleanor's hands curled into her skirt. She hated the way she felt so small under his eyes, but she could not stop staring. She could not stop thinking of the assistant who had once believed in her enough to grant her a chance. Now, here he was again, and yet entirely different. The strange, dizzying thought pressed into her skull: everyone had a variant self. Everyone. People and places, rewritten and rethreaded across the universes, anchoring those who crossed. She stood trembling in the truth of it, shaken by how suddenly it had revealed itself to her.
"You're him," Eleanor blurted before she could stop herself. The words tumbled out jagged. Her pulse thundered in her ears, but she couldn't take them back. "You're Mr. Croft's assistant. You're the one who opened the Chamber for me."
The man's brows knit together, his mouth firming into a line that seemed more skeptical than defensive. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said using the kind of voice that came from someone used to reason more than confrontation. "I've never met you before. And I'm no one's assistant. How do you know Mr. Croft?"
Eleanor's breath caught. Mr. Croft. The man she knew in her world existed here too. The threads between them all were real—people reemerging, reshaped but present. The University had its reflection, and so did those who walked its halls. If he was here, then maybe others were too. For a heartbeat she let herself believe she could find them all.
Her thoughts moved faster than her tongue, tripping over themselves. She should have stayed silent, she should have played cautious, but panic had a grip on her throat and the need to hold onto something familiar cracked her composure. She needed to give him an answer, any answer, to mask the truth sitting on her lips. And so, instead of silence, she chose the worst possible lie.
"I am his…" She swallowed hard, her voice faltering for a fraction of a second before stumbling forward. "Niece."
The word hung in the air like a fragile thing, brittle and ridiculous. Her stomach twisted the moment it left her mouth. She knew it sounded unconvincing, even desperate, but she couldn't call it back. Her mind raced to catch up with the lie, already preparing excuses she hadn't thought through. Her hands fidgeted at her sides, her shoulders stiff with the effort of pretending this wasn't a mistake.
She forced herself to meet his eyes, though her chest ached with the weight of the falsehood. He looked at her intently with the same puzzled scrutiny that had met her the moment she stepped into his sight.
Eleanor felt her breath shorten, heat rushing to her face. She had wanted to keep herself hidden, to not draw suspicion, and instead she had shattered whatever veil she might have had with one careless blurting. She hated how clumsy she was, how every nerve betrayed her at the worst possible time.
The man's questions had come one after another, and Eleanor had stumbled through them with half-formed answers that never seemed to satisfy him. She knew he was suspicious, his eyes narrowing each time her words faltered, but for reasons she could not pin down, he let her be. His silence after the final question felt heavy, as if weighing some unseen decision, until at last he gestured toward the door behind him.
"You will wait here," he said, holding the door open just enough for her to pass. His voice was clipped, careful, as though granting her entry went against his better judgment. "Mr. Croft is still in a meeting. He will be here soon."
Eleanor stepped inside, her lips pressed tight. She didn't answer him. Her attention had already drifted toward the room itself, which unfolded before her like a space out of another world. This was the first time she had been in someone's office at all, and certainly the first time in Mr. Croft's. Back in her own world, she had never dared, never been invited. She had only imagined it—plain walls, a desk covered in dusty folders, perhaps a chair that creaked with age. Practical, unremarkable, a space for work and nothing more.
But this—this was not that. The office here looked as though it had been drawn from the pages of a book about men who carried the world's secrets in their pockets. The walls were lined with shelves of thick leather-bound volumes, their spines gleaming with gold lettering that caught the light. A great oak desk stretched wide across the far end, polished until it shone like dark glass. Heavy curtains framed tall windows, the fabric rich and deep, letting only slivers of sunlight through. A rug, patterned with intricate designs she couldn't name, spread beneath her feet and muffled her steps. Even the air smelled different—leather, paper, and something faintly metallic, as though the room itself remembered the touch of countless instruments and tools.
Her eyes darted from detail to detail, unable to rest. She felt small in this room, small in the way a child feels when stepping into a cathedral, surrounded by grandeur she couldn't measure against her own plain life.
"What happened to you?"
The question cut through her thoughts. Eleanor turned sharply toward him, her body tightening. He was watching her with a different expression now, no longer just suspicious but something tinged with unease, as if regret had bloomed after allowing her inside.
His gaze lingered on her face, then lower, tracing the faint marks she carried with her. "Were you bullied in your school?" he asked. His voice was steadier than his eyes. "You have bruises, and they still look fresh."
Heat climbed her neck. Eleanor didn't know how to answer, didn't want to lay out truths she herself hadn't sorted. The words wouldn't come, so she only nodded. The motion was small, reluctant, but enough to acknowledge what he already saw.
Silence stretched between them. She tried to find something, anything, to push the conversation away from her body and back to him. Her eyes flicked to the neatness of his shirt, the way he carried himself, precise but not cold. She grasped the first thought that surfaced.
"Are you Mr. Croft's assistant?" she asked
The reaction was immediate. His posture stiffened, his mouth pulling tight. The words seemed to offend him in a way her other clumsy comments had not. "I am not Mr. Croft's assistant," he said, with a weight that made the distinction clear. "I am a physicist."
Eleanor blinked. Her brows furrowed as she tilted her head, trying to process what sounded like the strangest name she had ever heard. "Your name is Physicist?" she asked, genuine confusion breaking through her usual guardedness. "That's a weird name."
His eyes widened, then narrowed, a mixture of disbelief and irritation crossing his face. "What? No. That's my work," he said, exasperation pressing against each word. "You can call me Mr. Sterling."
Eleanor froze, caught between embarrassment and the urge to laugh at herself. Her cheeks flushed. The room suddenly felt hotter, heavier, as though the rug beneath her feet had become too thick to stand on. She hated how easily she revealed her ignorance, how quick she was to misunderstand. Still, the name settled in her mind. Sterling. A real name.
"What's your name?" the man had asked.
Eleanor's first instinct was to lie. She opened her mouth and closed it again, her mind tumbling over options. She had already told him she was Mr. Croft's niece, and that was enough of a fabrication to make her stomach twist. If Mr. Croft himself learned of it, surely Mr. Sterling would be blamed for letting her in so easily. She imagined the scene as if it had already happened, drawing from what she knew of her own Mr. Croft. A professor who carried knowledge sharp in the way he corrected, sharp in the way he scolded. Eager to teach, but hot-tempered. Unforgiving. She could see Mr. Sterling being dressed down in front of others for a mistake like this, because in her world Croft never tolerated lapses from his assistants, especially not those closest to him. Would the same hold true here? She could not be certain.
"My name is Eleanor Kos—Croft," she said quickly, her tongue stumbling over the truth she almost spoke.
He didn't notice the slip, or at least he gave no sign. "Alright, Eleanor," he said. His tone was calmer now, but not soft. "Sit down. I will get a first-aid kit to treat your bruises. I will be back. Don't touch anything."
Eleanor nodded, but her body betrayed her. The moment he stepped out, she rose again, moving as though drawn by something stronger than her own will. Her curiosity and fear twined together so tightly she could not separate them. She slipped out after him, keeping her distance but allowing her steps to carry her farther into the corridors, into the world she was not meant to explore.
Her heart raced as she went. She had never thought she would stand here, never thought she would cross at all. Her First Stitching had been a failure, an attempt clumsy enough to mark her in memory and in shame. She had watched others lace their passage into target universes, their threads clean and confident, while hers frayed and snapped under her inexperience. That was the end of her chances. The most she had ever learned afterward came only from lectures, delivered in the strict order of a classroom, theory spoken without the pulse of action.
Those lectures had drilled rules into her head that pressed against her now like invisible walls. She knew, as any trained Laceliner knew, that one law outweighed the rest: never, under any condition, interact with your variant self. Such a meeting carried consequences no one could define. The scholars warned of collapse, distortion, catastrophic unravelings that would not stop with one universe but ripple outward until both worlds frayed into ruin. Eleanor had never questioned them. She never imagined she would need to.
Now she was here. In a world that mirrored her own, a world that bore the shape of what she knew but not the substance. The thought came unbidden—if she was here, then her variant must be as well. The self who belonged to this place. The self who might be her anchor. The self she could never face.
Could that Eleanor be studying here, in this same institution, walking these same halls? Could she know Mr. Sterling? Could she be close to him in a way the other her could not imagine? The questions pressed harder with every step.
Eleanor's mind replayed Mr. Sterling's reaction when she had given her name. He had not looked shocked, not even curious. Perhaps her name was simply common here, as it was back home. Perhaps her existence here was no surprise at all. The idea left her unsettled, twisting inside with both relief and disappointment.
Still, she walked on, her fingers brushing the wall as though to test if it would dissolve beneath her touch, if this world would yield and reveal itself false. But it held steady. Everything here was real, and she was the intruder.
"Eleanor." The voice snapped her wandering thoughts in half. She froze where she stood, caught in the middle of the corridor like a child reaching for something forbidden. Mr. Sterling's footsteps were sharp against the floor, closing the distance before she could think of an excuse.
"Where were you going?" His tone was clipped, his eyes narrowing as though he had already decided she did not belong here.
Her mouth opened but no words formed. She could feel her pulse hammering in her throat. What could she say? That she had gotten lost inside the building she was never supposed to be in? That she was looking for her the version of herself who might exist here? Every answer sounded worse than silence.
"I—" she stammered, but before she could form more, his hand shot forward. His fingers closed hard around her arm, the grip more forceful than she expected. His face was set, not merely suspicious now but angry with a demand for truth.
"Don't lie to me." His voice was low, controlled, but it carried the weight of someone used to being obeyed. "You are not Mr. Croft's niece. How did you get here, and what do you want? How did the guards allow you inside?"
Eleanor flinched under his hold. The ache in her arm felt small compared to the sudden heaviness in her chest. She shook her head, scrambling for air as though the right words would come with it.
"There were no guards—" she began, blurting the first thing that touched her tongue.
But she never finished. The floor trembled beneath them, a shudder that rattled the glass along the corridor. A second rumble followed, deeper, the kind that made the walls seem thinner than they were. Then the noise came—screams, sharp and panicked, cutting through the air from outside.
Sterling's grip loosened, his head whipping toward the window. He strode past her. "What on earth—" He pushed to the glass, his breath fogging the pane as he tried to see below.
Eleanor did not need to look. Her body already knew. The wail that haunted her bones, the quake that accompanied the arrival of what should never have crossed—it was here. She had dragged it with her, even if she did not understand how. The knowledge sat in her gut like lead.
She clutched her burning arm where Sterling had held her, frozen in place, her chest tightening as the screams outside grew louder.
"I need to go," Eleanor said, her voice breaking as she spun toward him, her chest tight with urgency.
"No! You still need to talk to Mr. Croft—tell him you lied to me—" Sterling's words stopped short.
The glass behind him shattered with a roar. A boulder, large enough to flatten the hall, crashed through the window. Shards exploded like rain, slicing into the air. The boulder slammed into the floor with a thunder that shook the corridor. Sterling staggered back, his arms raised to shield his face, his expression white with shock.
"What the hell—" he shouted, his voice trembling between rage and disbelief. His chest heaved, and for a moment he did not move, paralyzed as if his mind refused to accept what his eyes had just seen.
Eleanor's heart pounded so hard it hurt. Her breath caught in her throat as the walls shuddered again, debris falling around them like hail. She darted toward him, adrenaline surging. "We need to go! Now!"
Sterling didn't answer. He stood rooted, still staring at the destruction, as though his body had forgotten how to act. Eleanor grabbed his sleeve with both hands and pulled, her voice cracking in desperation. "Move!"
Another crash split the corridor, a second boulder tearing through plaster and wood only a few steps behind them. Sterling jolted, his paralysis shattering. He stumbled into motion beside her, his eyes wild. "We are going to die!"
"Not if you keep running!" Eleanor shouted back, her lungs burning.
The halls were a storm of chaos. Students streamed past them in panicked waves, their cries high and sharp. Sterling tried to steer them, his voice rasping commands as he grabbed shoulders, pushed bodies toward the exits. He did not stop until he was sure the younger ones were out of the building, his jaw clenched in grim resolve.
But Eleanor was not thinking of the others. Her legs moved on instinct, her mind consumed by the truth she could no longer hide. "I need to get out of here!" she screamed, trying to break away from him.
Sterling caught her wrist, holding her back even as the walls groaned around them. "No! You still need to talk to Mr. Croft—"
Her voice cut through his like a blade. "For Interlace's sake, this monster wants me! Don't you get it? I need to leave before you all get killed!"
Sterling froze, his grip loosening. His eyes darted to her face, confusion twisting into something closer to fear. His mouth opened but no words came. Then his gaze dropped to her chest. "Why are you—glowing?"
Eleanor faltered. Her breath caught as she looked down, realizing too late what panic had made her ignore. Her multisigil blazed against her skin, the mark along her collarbone searing with heat. The burn was unbearable, a reminder she could not control it now.
She pressed her hand over the glow as if she could hide it. "I don't have time to explain. I have to go—"
Sterling's voice broke through the roar of collapsing stone. "I have a car. I can get you out of here!"
Car. The word meant nothing to her, but his urgency was undeniable. She didn't have the breath or time to ask.
They ran, side by side, through halls that no longer felt stable, each step rattled by the quake of something massive moving behind them. The walls trembled, the ceiling cracked, and the wail that chased them grew closer, so loud it felt like the building itself would split apart.
The doors at the end of the corridor burst open with the press of fleeing students. Eleanor and Sterling pushed through, stumbling out into the open air just as another boulder crashed behind them, scattering dust and fire.
Outside, the monster's shadow loomed. Its jagged crown rose above the roofline, its form bending light itself, twisting the air until the world looked broken. Every step it took shook the ground, chasing them toward whatever hope Sterling's mysterious "car" could offer.
Eleanor's breath came ragged, her body trembling from both terror and the burn of her sigil. Sterling caught her arm again, not with suspicion this time but with desperate insistence. "This way! Hurry!"
And they ran, the ground splitting behind them, the Crown Nullith roaring in pursuit.
The courtyard was chaos. Students scattered in every direction, some tripping, others dragging their friends, all of them crying out beneath the quake of collapsing stone. Dust rose in choking clouds, turning the air into a haze that burned Eleanor's throat. She stumbled forward, her arm still gripped tightly by Sterling, who wrenched her along with strength she hadn't expected from him.
"Where is it?" Eleanor shouted, though her words were swallowed by another wail that tore through the day.
"There!" Sterling gasped, pointing toward a row of metal beasts lined along the edge of the street. They gleamed under the fractured light of the streetlamps, strange creatures with wheels and glass eyes. One of them beeped sharply as Sterling pressed something in his hand, its eyes flashing with sudden light.
Eleanor's chest tightened. She had never seen such a thing, but she understood enough to know that this was his "car." A machine meant to move. A machine meant to save them.
Behind them, the Nullith's crown split the roof of the institution, jagged spines tearing through stone as if the building were paper. Dust and fire rained down, the monster's form bending the air until the world itself seemed to ripple. Eleanor's knees shook, her hand pressed over her burning sigil as though she could hold herself together.
Sterling yanked open the car's door and shoved her toward it. "Get in!"
She hesitated, staring at the contraption, her breath caught between panic and disbelief. The interior was lined with leather and strange controls, a box of metal and glass that smelled faintly of oil. "Inside? It's—"
"Now, Eleanor!"
The roar came again, closer this time, vibrating through her chest until she thought her ribs would crack. That was enough. She threw herself inside, scrambling across the seat as Sterling slammed the door behind her and ran around to the other side.
The moment he slid in, the beast came alive. The machine growled, its body shaking, and then the world jolted as it shot forward. Eleanor grabbed the nearest surface—a strap hanging beside her—and clung to it with both hands. The ground blurred beneath them, the wheels carrying them faster than her legs could ever have taken her.
She twisted in her seat to look back. The Nullith followed, its massive form bending the street, its spines scraping buildings as it forced its way through. Glass shattered in its wake, the air fractured like broken mirrors wherever it stepped. It should not have fit in this world, yet it tore through as though the city belonged to it.
Her throat tightened, her voice breaking with fear. "It's following us! It's not going to stop!"
Sterling's knuckles were white against the wheel, his jaw locked. Sweat glistened at his temple as he forced the car to swerve past fleeing bodies and falling debris. "What the hell is that thing?!"
"I—I don't know how to explain—" Eleanor's voice caught, her chest burning hotter. Her sigil seared so brightly she thought it might tear her skin open. "But it's here because of me."
Sterling shot her a glance, disbelieving, before focusing back on the road. "Because of you?!"
"I can't—" she shook her head, her eyes stinging. "I can't explain right now. Just drive faster!"
The car lurched as Sterling pressed harder, the engine screaming. Eleanor held her breath as the streets flew by in a blur of lights and stone, the monster's shadow still stretching impossibly long behind them.
For the first time, she realized how fragile she was here, inside a box of metal, racing through a world she did not understand, chased by a nightmare she had brought with her. And yet, beside her, Sterling did not let go.