“The Culling Cycle has been—” The wraith starts, but he cannot finish his sentence. His mouth remains wide open, almost comically so. Seconds pass. Nothing happens. No sound escapes him. Even his body has been locked in place, simply unmoving.
A strange crackling noise tears through the air.
Every obelisk in sight begins flashing violently, their surfaces strobing black, crimson, white in frantic succession. Symbols and runes ripple over the stone too quickly to comprehend. Beneath our feet, the ground trembles.
“What the hell?” Moe whispers.
I squeeze her hand. “Get ready to run when I say so.”
The wraith convulses. His head jerks sharply to one side and his body begins to lose transparency.
Then, suddenly, he snaps back to full opacity.
“System… inter… ruption… detected…”
The crowd recoils, confusion erupting throughout it. Their voices reach our ears, and all of them are saying the same thing:this has never happened before.
The obelisk closest to us turns bright enough to burn spots across my vision.
Words carve themselves into its surface.
OVERRIDE AUTHORITY ACCEPTED
EXTRACTION PROTOCOL INITIATED
My blood turns to ice.
“What does that mean?” Moe whispers. Before I can answer, the sky splits open.
A jagged tear of white-gold light rips through the crimson heavens, widening with a sound as if the world itself is being torn apart.
Panic erupts throughout the square as warriors stumble backward, shouting and pointing upward.
Then the force hits.
It wraps around my body with brutal violence, stronger than any arena transition I have ever endured, and yanks me off my feet.
Moe screams. I hold onto her even as I’m being swallowed into the void.
Then, we’re falling.
I twist midair on instinct and pull Moe against my chest, turning so my body takes the brunt of the impact.
Agony explodes through my back and shoulders as I slam into the ground first, my palms scraping raw against the stone when I catch us before her face can hit it.
Moe lands atop me with a startled cry, shaken but spared the worst of the fall.
My entire body aches from the force of the transition, yet even through the disorientation I know it instantly.
This is not Aimaxion. The air is cooler. Cleaner. There are no dust particles around, no suffocating air or heavy gravity. The sky above is dark and natural, not crimson and cursed. All around us, I see vibrant foliage, flowers and trees. Everything that was absent in Aimaxion.
For one wild heartbeat, hope surges through me. Have we somehow…returned home? The mark on our wrists are gone, so maybe… maybe?
But then I look around, and all potential hope dies.
We are surrounded.
An entire army encircles us in perfect formation, ranks upon ranks of armored warriors stretching outward in every direction. Hundreds of them. Perhaps more. I can’t even see the end of them.
