The transition didn't feel like drowning. It felt like being pulled through a needle's eye. One moment, the salty, diesel-stained air of the Lagos Lagoon was filling Amina's lungs; the next, she was inhaling something that tasted like static and ozone.
Amina hit a surface that felt like sand, but it didn't crunch. It chimed.
She coughed, spitting out a mouthful of liquid silver that evaporated before it hit the ground. Her vision was blurred, dancing with spots of violet light. "Tunde?" she croaked. Her voice sounded strange here deeper, vibrating with a resonance that made the air shimmer.
"I'm... I'm here."
A hand gripped hers. She pulled him close, and as her eyes adjusted, she gasped.
They weren't in a palace. They were on a shoreline made of pulverized white glass. The "sea" behind them was a vast, glowing expanse of mercury that moved in slow, heavy waves. But the sky the sky was a nightmare.
Instead of the golden sun of the Aether she remembered from her trances, the sky was a bruised charcoal color, torn open by jagged red streaks. Floating islands, once beautiful and lush, were now blackened husks, drifting aimlessly in the void like burnt-out coals.
"This is the Aether?" Tunde asked. He stood up, and Amina felt a shiver of awe.
He was changing. His soaked singlet had transformed into a suit of dark, translucent obsidian mail. His shoulders were broader, his posture straight and regal. But his face his face was still her Tunde. The fear hadn't completely left his eyes, but it was being pushed aside by a cold, ancient power.
"It's changed," Amina whispered, standing up. Her silk dress had become a gown of living shadow and light, woven with the blue threads of her own soul-energy. "It's dying."
"It's not dying," a voice rasped from the shadows of a nearby glass dune. "It's being harvested."
A figure stepped out. It was a soldier, but his armor was shattered, and his left arm was missing, replaced by a flickering projection of blue light. He looked at them with one good eye, the other being a scarred mess of silver.
"High Alchemist," the soldier said, falling to one knee. The glass sand chimed beneath his weight. "You've come back to a graveyard."
"What happened here?" Amina asked, her heart sinking. "Where is the Council? Where is the Guard?"
"The Void-Seekers didn't just attack the Bridge, My Lady," the soldier spat. "They opened a hundred rifts. They've been draining the Soul-Cores of every Alchemist they could find. They're building something in the Citadel a 'Void-Engine' to bridge the worlds permanently. They don't want to live in the Aether. They want to move to your world. They want Lagos. They want the 'Fresh Souls' of the billions who don't know how to fight back."
Tunde stepped forward, his obsidian boots crunching the glass sand. "They want to take the 'Real' world? They want to take my home?"
The soldier looked at Tunde, his single eye widening. "The Star-Core... it's awake. But it's not merged." He looked at Amina with desperation. "If you don't complete the union within the hour, the Seeker who followed you will find you. And here, in the Aether, there is no 'Bureau' to hide you. Here, you either reign or you vanish."
Suddenly, the mercury sea began to retreat, pulled back by a massive, unnatural tide. From the horizon, a black pyramid began to rise out of the liquid, its peak touching the red-streaked sky.
"The Citadel," Amina whispered.
"No," the soldier corrected, his voice trembling. "The Slaughterhouse. That is where they are taking the others. And that is where the King of the Void is waiting for the Star-Core to arrive."
Amina looked at Tunde. The man she had argued with over prepaid units was now holding a core of power that could either save two worlds or destroy them both.
"We have to go there," Tunde said. His voice was no longer trembling. "I'm tired of running, Amina. In Mowe, I couldn't even fix the generator. But here... I think I can fix this."