The light didn't blind.
It was erased.
For a heartbeat, the forest, the sky, the ground beneath Kael's feet—everything dissolved into white silence that had no texture, no dimension, no existence.
Then gravity returned.
Hard.
Kael slammed into the earth as a shockwave tore outward, flattening ancient trees in a perfect circle around the rupture point. Adrian braced himself behind a hastily erected wall of crimson energy, boots carving deep trenches into the soil as he fought to stay upright.
Where the fracture had been
Something stood.
It wore Luna's shape with terrible precision.
Same height. Same slender build. Same dark hair cascading over her shoulders in waves he'd memorized by touch.
Same eyes.
But those eyes were wrong.
One burned pure silver, bright as a dying star.
The other was endless black, a void that swallowed light.
Kael's breath caught in his throat, caught between hope and horror. "Luna?"
