Rey's eyes snapped open.
He was lying on his bed in Elara's safehouse, the familiar ceiling above him, the faint mystical wards humming along the walls providing their usual background presence.
His body was intact, uninjured, completely removed from the Empty False World where his clone had just...
Died.
The sudden severance of connection with his duplicated Soul had jolted him awake like a physical blow.
One moment he'd been relaxed after completing the battle within the Fanged Serpent's main base and blowing it up.
The next moment—nothing.
Complete absence where the connection had been.
It was like the link that connected him to his clone had been completely severed.
Rey sat up slowly, his analytical mind already processing what the severance meant.
'The clone either self-destructed as programmed, or something interfered with it catastrophically enough to sever our Soul link,' he thought, running through the contingencies he'd built into the duplicate's creation.
