The moment Rohan's boot touched the platform's raised edge, the fracture's light surged around him like a living thing drawing breath, and every sound in the laboratory — Director Ashwood's clipped instructions to her technicians, the low electronic hum of Meridian's monitoring equipment, even Corven's steadying voice at his shoulder — seemed to recede into some distant, muffled register, as though the world beyond the platform's edge had simply stopped mattering.
This is it. After everything, this is actually it.
The pull in his chest had stopped feeling like a sensation at all. It felt, now, like a second heartbeat, urgent and insistent, drawing him forward with a force that made standing still require genuine, deliberate effort.
