BOOOOM!
The combined attack met it head-on, and the collision produced no sound at first—only a thin, expanding distortion where light bent incorrectly and distance lost meaning.
Then it collapsed.
A fracture appeared in the air.
It was just a narrow separation between layers of the atmosphere, like two sheets that no longer aligned. It held for less than a second, then began to close immediately, edges drawing together with increasing speed.
Francis did not hesitate.
SWOOOSH!
He moved through it.
The moment his body crossed the boundary, everything changed.
His body adjusted before thought could catch up.
At a cellular level, oxygen dependency was no longer relevant.
His bloodstream did not rely on gas exchange. Instead, the hemoglobin analog within his system began binding directly to residual energy particles in the surrounding vacuum, extracting usable charge from quantum fluctuations rather than atmospheric oxygen.
