Paul’s eyes went wide. Ten seconds was not enough time for anything, let alone for a broom to solve all their problems.

He needn’t have worried.

Hunter’s grin said trust me as he flipped the broom in his hands, bristles down. With a sharp, almost dancer-like twist of his shoulders, he drove the brush head through the slime. Goo hissed and parted. Each sweeping stroke carved a narrow, wobbling strip of stone clear ahead of them. Slime splattered up in wet arcs, most of it flinging into the slime demon’s face.

The demon gargled in outrage.

He Xiangu moved in behind Hunter, swords drawn, her back pressed to his. She slashed upwards in a deadly arc, catching any white birds that dared swoop into range. Feathers and ice crystals spiraled away into the demon’s body, where they stuck like badly placed decorations.

Binky, naturally, took the scenic route. She used a slime mound as a springboard, leaping into the air with a cackle and scissor-kicking a bird out of the sky. The stunned creature ricocheted off a stall post and dropped, flopping, between jars of demon pickles. Somehow, by sheer miracle, no merchandise was smashed.

GATO: 7 seconds until portal closure.

Paul’s stomach somersaulted. The delicious mixed smells of cheese and spice turned sour in his mind. He thought he might be sick.

“Take my hand,” Hunter said to He Xiangu, still sweeping.

She stared at him like he had finally lost his mind. “Now is not the time for hand-holding.”

“Sling-shot maneuver. My arm strength is very good after all that sweeping in the tower slime rooms.”

Something in his tone must have convinced her. Or maybe it was the timer ticking down in all their visions. She nodded once, squeezed his hand, and then pushed off the ground as he swung her forward.

Paul watched, amazed, as Hunter planted the broom like a staff. The motion turned them into a two-person pendulum. He used his momentum to swing He Xiangu in a graceful arc, hurling her across the last stretch of slime-choked ground. She landed in a roll that would have made any battle choreographer clap, then spun and skidded to a stop just before the shimmering portal.

“Show-off,” Binky said, though her whiskers twitched in approval.

Hunter extended his free hand towards her. “Next.”

“I can jump that easy, squiddy prince,” she snorted. She uppercut a diving bird on principle, then leapt, clearing the last of the slime to land beside He Xiangu with insulting ease.

GATO: 3 seconds.

“Hold on tight, buddy,” Hunter said.

Paul wrapped all his tentacles around the broom handle. Hunter planted it, pushed off, and used it like a pole vault. For one breathless instant they were airborne, the slime demon screaming beneath them, birds spiraling in their wake, the portal filling Paul’s whole world in flickering colors.

Then the warm rush of portal air caught them, full of static and storm and the taste of worlds colliding.

The market, the birds, the slime, all tore away.

They tumbled into a new world.

* * *

Gusty wind slammed into Paul so hard it tore him from Hunter’s shoulder. His protective bubble, which had survived slime, birds and bureaucracy, burst like a soap film. Suddenly, he was falling.

He hit something soft and vanished up to his mantle in freezing powder.

Snow.

The cold bit into him at once, a hungry, gnawing chill that tried to turn him into ice. His light flickered thin and weak as the frost leached at him.

He might have panicked, but big, shaking hands scooped him up. Hunter cupped Paul carefully between both palms, bringing him close to his chest.

“Got you,” Hunter said through chattering teeth.

His light armor was made for warmer towers, not this. Snow was already crusting on the leather. His lips looked worryingly pale.

Even Binky had begun to shiver, her little rabbit teeth clicking. A thin layer of snow dusted her ears. She hunched in on herself like a ball of angry fluff.

He Xiangu, by contrast, simply stood in the storm like a carved statue. Snow gathered on her lashes, shoulders and hair. Paul could see a purple tinge in her full lips, but she didn’t seem to notice. Or refused to.

A ghostly projection of the Portalier shimmered into view, hovering in the air wearing a worried expression. He snapped his fingers with an audible pop, and a familiar shimmer closed over Paul.

Warmth.

A new bubble formed around him, soft as bathwater and clear as glass. The howling wind became a muffled rumble. His glow flared back up, grateful.

GATO: Apologies. Portal hopping interferes with bubble integrity. We have to renew environmental protection after each jump.

“No harm done.” Paul stretched his tentacles as bliss returned to his limbs. “There are worse ways for us squids to die. At least I would have gone as a scrumptious popsicle.”

Binky snorted a laugh. “You really are an optimistic little squid, aren’t you?”

Hunter huffed, steam curling from his breath. “No fear in this one. Death doesn’t even faze him. Look on the bright side of death, right?”

Paul gave him a little bow as best as a squid could bow in a bubble. “Bright sides are easier to see if you glow with joy.”

As soon as he felt toasty warm again, excitement started fizzing through him. A new world. A new sky. New smells. New dangers. New ingredient.

The snow swirled thick around them, but even through it he could make out shapes. Jagged shadows. Something tall and wrong on the horizon, like a tower that had decided to be alive and never stopped.

He called up his interface.

[Map/World Stats Updated

Name: Unknown World

Arrival Location: Frozen Expanse

Ingredient: Sunray Sugar (refined from sugar beet)

Ingredient Location Prediction: Whitefathers Caves

Setting: Blizzard-scoured tundra, mana-saturated bedrock, distant stitched tower

Hazards: High mana poisoning, bat dung, zombie spiders

Portal Close: 29 minutes.]

In the distance, veiled by snow, a tower loomed. It looked like someone had taken massive beast parts and stitched them together into one impossible, pulsing shape. Bones and hide. Plates of chitin. Fangs curled like ribs. Every so often, a faint light pulsed deep inside it, as if a heart still beat inside.

He Xiangu watched the snowfall, then glanced at Paul’s map. “GATO, you said this location would be revealed when we arrived. The world name is still hidden.”

Binky exhaled an icy plume, ears drooping under the weight of snow. “None of us win the bet then. How about the closest guess counts?”

“How about we focus on not dying?” Hunter stamped his feet, trying to get feeling back into them. “It’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. Can we get bubbles too?”

“You are a cultivator, numbnuts,” Binky said. “Circulate your chi. It will keep the worst of the cold out.”

GATO: You can handle the cold, Hunter. World designation is Titania—its ancient name when it was home to the four Titan Beast Gods. The caves you’re looking for will shelter you from the worst of the storm. They are nearby.

“Titania,” Paul repeated quietly. The name felt old on his tongue. Heavy and sad and hopeful all at once.

Binky sniffed the air. “How does anything grow here in this barren wasteland?”

The Portalier’s transparent image hovered closer, looking guilty.

“It is not always this cold,” the Portalier said. “Your portal hopping has accelerated the seasonal rift. I have tried to slow it. That is all I can say without violating the rules.” 

He gave them a half-bow and vanished.

The air seemed to grow heavier in the silence that followed. Storm clouds thickened, turning the sky from gray to iron.

Hunter perched Paul back on his shoulder to free his hands, then blew hot air into his cupped fingers. He might have been a cultivator, but at the moment he looked like any half-frozen young man with too-thin of armor.

He Xiangu unclasped something from her own gear. A fur-lined cloak, silvered on the inside from some chi-infused beast.

“Here,” she said, voice matter-of-fact. “Put this on. I have no need for it. Cycling chi at your level will not ward off this much cold. There is a blizzard coming. I know the signs.”

Hunter hesitated. “You’ll freeze.”

She snorted. “I grew up where hellfire and ice storms shared a bed. I’ll cope. Put it on.”

He met her eyes. For a second, the wind seemed quieter, as if even the storm wanted to hear the answer.

“Thank you,” he said. His smile was small but real. “You’re a life saver.”

Something passed between them then, something that made Paul’s tiny squid heart swell, the way it had the first time Mina scooped him carefully out of a bucket and kept him safe.

GATO: Portal closes in 24 minutes.

“Let’s move before Hunter’s monkey balls freeze and fall off.” Binky sniffed again, this time deeper. “I smell underground caves not too far ahead.”

He Xiangu nodded. “According to the map, Binky’s right.” Her brows drew together. “Hope you can all swim. Some of the caverns look waterlogged. Last thing we need is to reach a sump and get trapped.”

“Sump?” Paul asked.

GATO: A sump is a section of cave where the passage dips under water, creating a flooded choke point. If the exit is blocked or submerged, escape may be impossible.

Paul shivered, and not from cold. He could swim, yes, but he was too small to drag his friends through a flooded tunnel. And they could not breathe underwater like he could.

By the time they reached the cave entrance, the wind had become a living thing. It howled around them, shoving at their backs, driving snow into every seam and crack. The world beyond the mouth of the cave was nothing but white.

Binky stomped ahead, one paw pressed to the ground, using her earth affinity like a compass. “This way,” she shouted over the gale. “There’s hollows under here.”

The cave yawned open like a stone throat. Inside, the air was immediately calmer, though still cold. The ground was not bare rock like Paul had imagined, but a rough, earthy floor, frozen at the surface yet damp beneath, as if the world was sweating under its ice.

“So we’re going to find sugar in a cave now.” Binky thumped her foot. “This quest gets dafter by the world.”

Paul shook his head. “The sugar comes from sugar beet, and they grow underground.”

“In a cave?” She sounded extremely unconvinced.

“In rare instances, yes,” Paul said. “If there is enough seepage and the right kind of mineral flow. And if the world is special.”

“In my world,” Binky said, hopping further in, “all veggies grew in farmlands, not inside frozen cav—”

She broke off with a strangled sound.

Her jaw had dropped.

Paul drifted forward for a better look.

The cave was beautiful.

A shallow stream ran along the floor, water so clear it looked like liquid glass, moving just fast enough to make little white eddies where it brushed past stone. Flowstone draped the walls like melted candle-wax frozen mid-drip. Curtains of calcite shimmered in pale blues and soft golds where mana light caught them.

Snow drifted down through narrow cracks in the ceiling, dusting some of the formations. The falling flakes caught on crystalline teeth, glittering as they melted and dripped into the water. It was like walking through the inside of a frozen waterfall.

In places the flowstone swelled, forming ridges and teeth. One great fang of rock jutted down from the roof, wickedly sharp and stained faintly red by some iron-rich deposit.

GATO: Notable formation detected. Local name: Devil’s Tooth. Avoid direct contact. High mana saturation.

Paul’s bubble hummed gently as they passed under it. He could feel the power in the stone, a deep, old current, trying to burrow into him.

Bats clung to the ceiling in little clusters, their bodies small and pale, wings wrapped tightly around themselves. Every so often one shifted, showing eyes that glowed briefly with reflected mana. GATO marked them as Daubenton’s Chi-Bats. Beneath the roosts, the stone was stained dark.

GATO: Environmental notice. Bat dung detected. Prolonged contact may cause mana poisoning. Do not ingest.

“I was not planning to,” Paul said.

The stream deepened as they moved along, and soon Hunter and He Xiangu were wading knee-deep through icy water. Their breath puffed out in white clouds. Binky hopped from rock to rock and half-submerged ledges, using the shadowed patches where earth touched water.

Zombie spiders appeared twice. Once, clinging to the wall above them, long dead legs twitching faintly in residual mana currents. Once, skittering across the surface of the water in front of them, its eye sockets full of blue-green light. He Xiangu flicked a small burst of sword-light at that one. It burst into ash and bone fragments that the stream carried away.

“This place is lovely,” Binky said. “In a trying-to-murder-us sort of way.”

They came at last to a wider chamber where the ceiling rose, and a great ragged hole above let snow fall in steady curtains. It landed in soft piles on a small, raised island of damp earth in the middle of the stream. Tiny white fungi clung to the shaded sides of the island. Small crystal-tipped plants grew in clumps, their leaves catching the falling flakes and channeling meltwater down to the soil.

It should have been full of beet leaves. Paul could feel it—the right soil, the right chill, the right mana flow hugging a shape under the surface.

Only fresh snow showed.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” He Xiangu asked.

Binky didn’t even open her eyes. She’d already dropped to all fours, paws pressed to the ground, aura sinking down into the earth. 

“Listen, Sparkleflaps,” she said. “Of course I’m sure. Instead of exercising your mouth, try your brain. The beet stalks are buried under the new snow.”

“Can you use your paws to burrow down and pull them out?” He Xiangu asked, ignoring the nickname with saintly restraint.

“Technically, yes.” Binky’s nose wrinkled. “But brute-forcing them out of frozen ground is going to wreck the goods.”

Paul’s heart skipped. “Is there a gentler way we can harvest some?”

Hunter pulled out the same broom he’d used to clear a path through the slime. “What about this? I can sweep off the top layer, see what we’re dealing with.”

“That could work,” He Xiangu said.

Hunter set to work, careful this time, his strokes measured instead of desperate. Snow brushed aside in soft waves until a thin sheet of ice glimmered underneath, with hard, dark permafrost below.

His face fell. “Right. Hard mode.”

He turned to He Xiangu. “Think you can use your fire affinity to soften it without roasting the plants alive?”

She lifted a brow. “I’m not a farmer, but I know how to control my powers.” She rubbed her hands together as if warding off the cold. Heat gathered instead. Her palms began to glow, and the air over the ice shimmered, warping like it did over hot rocks in summer.

Water droplets formed, then trickled. The sheet of ice thinned, then cracked, revealing something beneath.

Paul narrowed his eyes. 

Beneath the last veil of ice lay something that looked like a beet and a jewel had fallen in love. Its outer skin was translucent, frosted like carved glass. Veins of warm gold ran through it, faintly glowing.

“So pretty,” Paul said. “So magical. I wonder what it’s called.”

[Identify? Y/N] blinked in his vision.

“Yes.”

[Frostglow Beet]

– Thrives in permafrost soil.

– Grows sweeter the colder it gets.

– Cracks like crystal when cut.

– Legend says it “stores sunlight it has never seen.”

As soon as He Xiangu withdrew the last of her heat, Binky hopped closer. “Step back. This could get a little messy.”

She didn’t have He Xiangu’s graceful sword movements, but Paul could tell she was trying. She dug carefully, loosening the softened earth around the beet. Occasionally a clod of dirt flew a bit too enthusiastically and smacked the cavern wall, waking a few bats. They shuffled and chittered, but didn’t drop.

GATO: Portal closes in 10 minutes.

Above them, the wind howled louder through the cracked roof. Snow fell in thicker curtains, threatening to bury everything again if they stayed much longer.

“How many beets do you need to make your sunray sugar?” Binky asked, levering the first Frostglow Beet free and rolling it onto the island.

Paul studied its size, doing quick mental measurements against Mina’s old recipe. “I could… probably get by with one. But then there’d be no room for mistakes. If we have two the same size, I’ll have enough for the next few winters.”

“Say less,” Binky said, already digging for a second.

Paul joined in, using his tentacles to brush aside the melting slush and loose soil. As he worked, a shift in the air tugged at his senses like the drop of pressure before a big wave.

Movement above the cracked roof snagged his attention. Shadows thickened in the swirling snow. The air tasted… wrong. Bitter, like ruined tides and old fear.

He couldn’t feel the cold through his bubble, but Hunter’s shivers told the story for him.

“The birds are coming,” Hunter said, his voice quiet. “I can feel it.”

The first of the white shapes burst through the opening—cold birds, wings throwing off shards of ice, eyes black as old storms. Then more. And more. They didn’t dive yet, just circled, filling the slice of sky.

Binky wrenched the second beet free and hurled it to Hunter. “Catch!”

He snatched it one-handed and shoved both beets into his storage ring. “We’re done. Move!”

Quest Progress: 4 of 4 Ingredients Collected.

They fought their way back towards the cave entrance, blades and rabbit fists ready, but the birds merely wheeled above, screaming. Waiting.

Outside, the world had turned into a wall of white.

GATO: Portal closes in 4 minutes.

“There’s no time to wait it out,” Hunter said. “We have to brave the storm, or we’ll miss the portal.”

Paul looked out at the maelstrom and raised a tentacle. “That’s not an ordinary storm.”

His insides twisted. He knew rough seas. He knew when to ride a wave and when to dive deep. He did not run from his problems. But something in him, the same part that had first heard the seasonal rift calling like a broken song, reached out and recoiled at the same time.

It felt like a raging beast waiting outside the cave. One that knew his scent.

Before he could overthink it, Paul slipped off Hunter’s shoulder and glided to the cave mouth. He reached one tentacle out into the storm.

Nothing tore him apart.

He reached out with another tentacle.

Voices echoed behind him—Hunter, Binky, He Xiangu—but they sounded far away, like he was underwater and they were shouting from the shore.

The storm rose to meet him.

It howled and clawed, but beneath the noise he felt something unexpected. A pulsing, raw grief. A hunger for endings. The same ache that had torn his world and stolen everyone he loved, wrapped in cold and rage.

He held his own essence tightly, something he hadn’t even realized was there until now, and reached with it. His tentacles glowed bright, points of light stabbing into the swirling dark. Where they touched the wind, the snow glittered gold for a heartbeat.

It wasn’t enough.

He reached further.

Pressure built in him, like his soul was stretching, straining to bridge a gap it was never meant to cross. The seasonal rift pushed back, its hunger bottomless. It wanted his fear, his sadness, his memories of Mina’s laugh and his neighbors’ voices and the way his world had smelled before it was taken from him.

Something broke inside him. The floodgates of grief he’d been holding shut since the day the sea went wrong burst wide. He thought he heard himself make a sound, but it was swallowed by the gale.

Hands closed around him. Hunter’s hands, warm even through the cold. Hunter lifted him, but did not pull him away from the entrance. Paul wrapped one glowing tentacle around his wrist.

The warmth of that grip was like the moment Mina had scooped him from a bucket of seawater. A tiny, stubborn light against a huge, cruel world.

The storm reacted.

Wind slammed into Hunter, doing its best to hurl him off his feet. He staggered, boots sliding on the snow-crusted stone, until He Xiangu braced against his side and Binky shoved at his back. Together they made a three-creature anchor.

More birds poured from the clouds behind them—only they didn’t attack. They streaked past, racing into the heart of the storm as if recalled by a master.

Bats, too, streamed from cracks in the cave roof, driven mad by the pressure. As they left the mouth of the cave, Paul watched in horror as their bodies seized up. Ice bloomed over their wings, their eyes, their tiny bodies. They fell like black rain, hitting the tundra beyond and freezing solid, red eyes wide with shock.

Some never even made it that far. He could feel it—the rift grabbing their souls, snipping the invisible threads that tied them to flesh. Their bodies tumbled down as empty shells, turning to glassy statues the moment they struck the frozen ground.

GATO: You are all in mortal danger.

Binky snorted, voice tight. “Prize for the most obvious statement goes to you. It’s a whiteout out there. Even with the map, how are we supposed to find the portal?”

GATO: I can guide you.

“Can you give us bubbles like Paul’s?” Hunter yelled over the roar.

GATO: I am afraid not. The weather is a manifestation of the seasonal rift. It is not a natural part of this world. My shielding does not interface cleanly with it.

Paul stared into the storm. For a second, he thought his bubble had failed—the cold felt that sharp. He blinked once. Twice.

The snow shifted.

An enormous face seemed to form in the clouds. Not truly a face—more the idea of one. Two great hollows where eyes should be, pits of swirling dark that nothing could escape. A wide, yawning maw like a sinkhole in the sky, teeth made of broken lightning.

“As soon as we go out there, we’re goners,” Binky said. “Can we forfeit the quest? Use your magi-tech wizardry to open a portal here and get us out? Paul can come live with me. I’ve got plenty of room and no murderous storms.”

GATO: The rift will follow. It knows Paul now. It will never stop.

Hunter pulled a squat bottle from his storage ring, uncorking it with his teeth. “Firewater. Might keep the cold off our bones. Or melt them. Either way, better than standing still.”

They drank. The liquid burned like liquid sunlight going down. Paul’s mantle fizzed; his glow went slightly wobbly at the edges.

A sea shanty Mina used to hum bubbled up out of him. Before he knew it, he was singing as they staggered out into the storm, clinging to each other and to GATO’s glowing waypoint in their vision.

The storm hit them like a wall.

Snow blinded. Wind shoved. The ground disappeared under drifts and hidden ice. Hunter slipped. Binky lost her footing and crashed into He Xiangu. Paul’s song broke off as his bubble jolted.

They fell.

The seasonal rift roared in triumph, wind coiling tighter around them like a fist.

* * *

Somewhere above the howl, the Portalier flickered into being long enough for the storm to scream in his face.

“If I do nothing,” he said, “they will die.”

GATO spun around him like a distressed pink comet, her luminous eyes fixed on the monstrous face forming in the stormclouds. “Ninety-nine point nine nine percent certainty.”

“And then,” the Portalier said quietly, “the rift will find its way to Hunter and He Xiangu’s world. Their tower. Their friends. It will devour every character who calls those stories home.”

GATO’s ears drooped. “Correct.”

“And,” the Portalier added, lifting a brow, “the two authors who built those worlds will give up sharing new stories altogether. Believing no one wants to read them.”

GATO winced. “They are very close to finding their people,” she whispered.

The Portalier adjusted his goggles, peering down at the half-buried forms of the brave questers who had chosen—against all logic—to help a tiny firefly squid save his lost world.

“And what,” he said, “if I intervene?”

GATO’s voice pitched up in alarm. “It is not recommended, sir. If you interfere directly, the Goddess Kythia—”

“Might be too busy to notice,” he cut in, tapping a thoughtful finger to his chin. “Or… let me ask a different question. Is there a way for me to do nothing in which the zero-point-zero-one percent chance of their survival remains… open?”

GATO blinked. “Sir?”

“Well,” the Portalier said, “I can’t very well help them. That would be rule-breaking. But the rift is highly distractible… yes? And don’t you”—he gave her an exaggeratedly innocent wink—“have some maintenance checks to perform? A healing ray to calibrate? Might as well be productive while we wait here for them to die.”

Her eyes widened and sparked with understanding.

“There is nothing,” GATO said, “in the rules… that forbids you from engaging the rift in a highly distracting conversation while I ensure my healing ray is fully operational with some test bursts in… random locations.”

She darted a look toward the heap of bodies slowly icing over.

“I will log my official recommendation that you do not break the rules.”

The Portalier smiled a crooked, reckless smile.

He stepped forward, cleared his throat, and spoke toward the swirling storm as though greeting a dignitary at a garden party.

“Mr. Rift, my good man— may I offer my sincerest congratulations on a job well done?”

The storm actually hesitated. Just a fraction. Just enough.

“Oh, absolutely magnificent work,” he continued. “Coldest squall I’ve seen in centuries. Why, my wife — lovely woman, patient with my nonsense — she’d say this is the sort of weather that ruins soup and marriages in one go.”

GATO’s healing ray flickered behind him with faint pink beams sweeping across collapsed bodies, nudging warmth back into limbs, jump-starting shivering.

A low rumble rolled through the storm. Confusion? Annoyance? Hard to tell.

“Now, I don’t mean to interrupt,” he continued, dusting imaginary snow from his sleeve, “but there’s just one more thing that’s been gnawing at me.”

He turned as if to leave but pivoted back. “You see, sir, you’ve been chasing these folks like they owe you rent. And that’s all well and good — terrifying, apocalyptic, very dramatic.”

He nodded. “But between you and me? You missed a spot.”

The storm sputtered.

Reality rippled — just enough.

Behind him, unseen by the Rift, GATO flickered online, her healing ray strobing in fast, precise bursts over the half-buried bodies.

Warmth seeped into Hunter’s limbs.

He Xiangu’s fingers curled.

Binky’s ears shot upright like spring-loaded weapons.

Paul’s glow brightened from dying ember to trembling spark.

The Portalier continued talking, casual as a man inspecting leaky pipes.

“My ears pop in an elevator. It’s a terrible condition. But even I can hear when a storm loses its rhythm. Oh, I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean that as an insult. You are very able. Truly. One of the more impressive seasonal anomalies I’ve met.”

The Rift snarled.

Snow spiraled inward, folding into itself like a ravenous breath preparing to swallow the horizon.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “There it is. Right on cue.”

Behind him, in Paul’s vision—

GATO: Get up. Now. Follow my lights. The portal is east-northeast — eight paces.

Hunter shoved himself upright, dragging He Xiangu with him.

Binky scrambled onto his back with surprising grace for someone half-frozen.

Paul pulsed weakly in Hunter’s hands like a lantern fighting an ocean of dark.

A fresh sweep of GATO’s healing ray washed over them, jolting their blood like lightning.

The Portalier lifted one finger.

“And if I could trouble you with one last question… do you, by any chance, have a first name? Only asking for paperwork reasons. You know how it is. Forms. Boxes to tick.”

The storm reeled back—

as if bureaucracy itself dared challenge it.

GATO: RUN.

They moved as one.

Half-stumbling, half-crawling, clinging to each other while the blizzard clawed their faces and devoured their footprints the instant they formed.

Ahead, a faint flicker grew into a wavering shimmer. The portal struggled to hold itself open against the storm’s fury. Its edges pulsed weakly, as if already slipping out of existence.

Behind them, a low roar rose into a hungry bellow.

The Rift gathered itself like a beast preparing to strike and then it lunged.

The storm swallowed the sky.

The cold hit like a collapsing world.

And everything went white.