Avery woke to the sound of screaming light.
It wasn’t human — not sound, not really. The noise rippled through the marrow of her bones, shattering memory from sensation. The air smelled like lightning and ashes; the world around her pulsed between form and emptiness.
She was lying on glass. Or maybe water. Or maybe both.
Something dripped against her cheek — black and luminous. She blinked, vision swimming through fractured color until it found the figure kneeling beside her.
“Kael…”
He looked half-real. One shoulder flickered between shadow and form, veins of light crawling beneath his skin like living cracks. His hand, when it touched her face, was cold enough to sting.
“You’re alive,” he said. The relief in his tone was buried deep, muffled beneath exhaustion. “Don’t move yet. The
