The moment it looked back, the world lost something subtle.
Not light.
Not sound.
Certainty.
It happened quietly, almost imperceptibly, like a thread pulled loose from fabric that had always been assumed whole, and yet the absence it created spread faster than anything I could measure. The fractures around us, once faint and distant, responded immediately. They did not widen or multiply in any obvious way, but they sharpened, their presence pressing more firmly against perception as though reality itself had begun acknowledging them.
Umbra reacted first.
Its form flickered violently, far more unstable than it had been since leaving the Temple, and the bond between us tightened to the point of pain. Emotion surged through it in chaotic waves.
Fear.
Not the scattered, uncertain fear of earlier.
Focused.
Directed.
Old.
