After hours of struggle…
Thanex finally forced his way through.
The last barrier shattered beneath his grip with a violent surge of energy.
The fractured boundary between the Subrift and the world above cracked like brittle glass as his body pushed past it.
Golden lightning exploded across his skin one final time.
Then—
Gravity returned.
His body dropped suddenly.
Thanex slammed hard onto solid ground.
The impact knocked the air from his lungs.
For a moment he simply lay there, motionless, his chest rising and falling as he struggled to breathe.
The surface beneath him felt rough.
Cold.
Real.
After everything he had endured in the endless darkness of the Subrift, the sensation of solid ground felt almost unreal.
Thanex slowly rolled onto his back.
His muscles ached violently from the climb.
Burn marks still covered parts of his arms and shoulders where the Rift's lightning had struck him.
The Inchor of Chaos moved quickly to repair the damage, cobalt-blue energy flowing quietly through his veins as his body healed itself.
But for now…
He simply stared upward.
"Where is this place?" Thanex wondered.
It was certainly not where he and the other members of his team had entered the divine realm from.
Above him stretched a sky unlike anything he had ever seen.
Golden clouds drifted slowly across an endless horizon.
The light was soft yet powerful, illuminating the strange world around him with a warm glow that seemed both beautiful and unsettling at the same time.
The sky itself looked unstable.
Waves of shimmering light moved across the atmosphere like ripples through water.
Occasionally faint cracks appeared briefly across the sky before sealing again moments later.
Reality itself felt… thinner here.
Thanex blinked slowly.
The Divine realm in all it's wrongness.
The thought felt strange in his mind.
He had heard about places like these countless times from Rift explorers and Resonants passing through the outskirts, long before he became a Canary himself.
Most described it as a place of divine beauty, although he had always been tense when entering a portal gate and hadn't had time or the leisure of appreciating its splendor.
A peaceful layer of existence that surrounded the great Rift Gates.
A place closer to the heavens.
But the stories had left something out.
Thanex slowly sat up.
His eyes widened slightly as he finally looked around.
The Divine Realm was not peaceful, Most especially this part of it.
It was broken.
Floating ruins drifted across the horizon in every direction.
Massive fragments of shattered stone structures hovered silently in the air like pieces of a destroyed world frozen in time.
Broken pillars floated sideways above the landscape.
Cracked stairways led nowhere.
Fragments of enormous buildings drifted slowly through the sky, their foundations torn apart long ago.
Some of the ruins were enormous.
Large enough to have once been entire cities.
Now they were nothing more than drifting wreckage.
The ground beneath Thanex was no better.
The terrain stretched outward in jagged layers of cracked stone and shattered architecture.
Ancient roads lay broken beneath layers of dust.
Fragments of statues lay scattered across the land.
Many had been worn down by time until their faces were completely unrecognizable.
Others were broken entirely.
Arms missing.
Heads shattered.
Bodies split in half.
Thanex stood slowly.
His legs trembled slightly from exhaustion, but the strength flowing through his body stabilized him quickly.
He looked across the horizon again.
The destruction stretched endlessly in every direction.
This wasn't a peaceful divine realm.
It was a battlefield.
A battlefield left behind by forgotten gods.
The realization settled heavily in his mind.
Something terrible had happened here long ago.
Something powerful enough to destroy entire divine structures.
Yet the remnants of that conflict still remained.
The air itself carried a strange pressure.
Thanex could feel it against his skin.
The energy in this place was different from the world he had known.
Denser.
Older.
More unstable.
The Void inside him stirred faintly.
Uneasy.
Thanex frowned slightly.
That reaction surprised him.
Until now, the Void had been calm.
Silent.
Almost comfortable within the Subrift.
But here…
It felt different.
The darkness inside his soul shifted slowly, like a predator sensing unfamiliar territory.
Thanex walked forward a few steps.
Small pieces of broken stone crunched beneath his boots.
Even the ground felt unstable.
Some sections floated slightly above the surface as if gravity itself struggled to function properly in this realm.
His eyes continued scanning the distant ruins.
Then he saw movement.
Far across the shattered landscape, something large walked slowly between the broken pillars of an ancient structure.
At first he thought it might be a drifting piece of debris.
Then the shape moved again.
It was a creature.
Large.
Twisted.
Even from this distance he could tell it was nothing like the Blighted wolf he had fought in the Subrift.
This one looked far larger.
Its silhouette was massive against the glowing sky.
Long limbs moved slowly through the ruins as the creature wandered across the battlefield.
Thanex's instincts reacted instantly.
Danger.
His muscles tightened slightly.
More movement appeared across the distant terrain.
Smaller shapes moved between the ruins.
Some crawled across broken walls.
Others drifted slowly through the air like distorted shadows.
Monsters.
Many of them.
Thanex slowly exhaled.
So this place isn't empty either.
The realization settled into his thoughts quickly.
Of course it wasn't empty.
A battlefield abandoned by gods would naturally attract creatures born from unstable energies.
This part of the realm was probably filled with them.
Thanex looked down at his hands for a moment.
The cobalt glow of the Inchor pulsed faintly beneath his skin.
The Void remained quiet inside his soul, but its earlier unease still lingered.
This place is dangerous.
But the thought didn't frighten him.
If anything…
It felt familiar.
Thanex had spent his entire life surviving in dangerous places.
The outskirts had never been safe.
Hunger.
Cold.
Violence.
Every day was a struggle just to stay alive.
Compared to that life…
This broken battlefield was simply another challenge.
Still, something felt different here.
The air itself seemed to resist him slightly.
Thanex took another step forward.
The Void inside him stirred again.
Uneasy.
Almost… defensive.
He paused.
Why does it feel like that?
Thanex looked around again carefully.
The golden sky.
The drifting ruins.
The distant monsters roaming across the shattered landscape.
Everything about this place felt wrong.
Not hostile.
But incompatible.
Then the realization came quietly.
This world did not welcome him.
Thanex stood silently among the ruins.
The Void inside him stirred uneasily.
This world was weary of his being.