The toll of crossing the divide was less like a drop into the unknown and more like a hurdle through infinity.

A weightless collapse, but not of the world around him.

But within.

A scalding stripping of synapse into synoposis. Inariel felt his consciousness unraveling, the neat spools of memory ...

A moonless sky, a starless heaven. Was all that stood above and around the obsidian lake.

A canopy of cascading black akin to falling night. A deluge of dusk, unlike anything he had ever witnessed on the material plane. Only in the blackest reaches of his own soul, the gore of his own abyss. Yet ...

Casually, he sat sifting through the pages of the tomes before him. Not out of idleness—nothing about Inari was casual—but because centuries had taught him the wisdom of stillness. His claws, blackened at the tips like burnt parchment, traced delicate runes along the spine of ancient volumes, each ...

The air in the Boundary tasted of time—a dry, layered flavor of aged parchment, crumbling leather, and the hushed breath of centuries. Dust motes, illuminated by shafts of silver light from impossibly high windows, danced like forgotten ghosts in the cathedral-like silence. Rows upon rows of books ...

The silence that followed Nagase’s words was not empty. It was a dense, weighted thing, pressing in on Inariel from all sides. Though they were but soft utterances, Nagase's words of gratitude carried the weight of mountains, settling deep in a soul that had known only the hollow echo of its own ...

And the plot thickens as Nagase entered. Ripples in the unseen became like floods. The collected aura of everyone in attendance—nobles, warriors, and would-be kings—grew trepidatious as only her arrival could accomplish. She wore no finery of the Vesta court, only the dark, practical leathers and ...

The Grand Chamber of Solara felt less like a seat of power and more like a gilded cage full of carrion birds. The air, thick with the scent of old stone, vibrated with the discordant squawking of the assembled crowns. They postured and preened, their voices a cacophony of fear masked as authority ...

The Acrix Solara. The very name seemed etched into his soul, a persistent echo in the vast expanse of his existence. No matter how far Inari journeyed, through realms shimmering with alien suns or the hushed, ethereal planes between worlds, the pull of Solara was an undeniable constant. It was here ...

"Show them to me."

Taking a deep breath, Inariel turned and beckoned. From the treeline, eight figures emerged into the spectral light. They were a collection of broken things, just as she had seen. They were the lost, the damned, the forgotten—and they were his. They knelt as one before the ...

"Your mending is why I have returned," Inariel said, his voice gaining strength. The time for apologies was past; the time for purpose was now. "Introducing my companions to Hellena and her people was but one reason. The other… it concerns the very thing we both fought to escape."

Minratha's gaze ...