“It’s not just a rift,” I say, louder now, the words pulling everyone’s attention back to me.
“What do you mean?” Jack asks.
I drag a hand over my face, trying to steady myself, trying to make sense of the way everything inside me is pulling in two different directions at once.
“Rifts bring people here,” I say slowly. “That’s what they do. That’s what we’ve seen.”
“Yes,” Caly says.
“But this one—” My voice falters for a second, and I force it steady again. “This one isn’t closing. It’s not collapsing in on itself. It’s holding.”
Another pulse runs through the air, stronger this time, and the tear shudders wider again, the space beyond it becoming clearer. Clear enough. I take a step forward without meaning to.
“Pax,” Sonny gasps.
I barely hear him because I can see it now.
Not just shapes.
Not just colour.
A sky.
Blue.
Not green.
Blue.
My stomach drops. My breathing shallows. My heart slams so hard, it hurts.
“No way,” I breathe.
Ten years.
Ten years of being here.
Ten years of surviving, adapting, changing into someone I barely recognise sometimes.
Ten years of wanting, of needing, of dreaming about going back. And now… now it’s right there.
I feel sick.
Hope surges so fast, it’s almost painful, crashing into something heavier, something tangled and complicated and a hell of a lot harder to ignore now.
Because Varek isn’t there.
He’s here—fighting, holding the line, and trusting me to do the same.
“Pax,” Jack says, more firmly this time. “Talk to me. What is it?”
I drag my gaze away from the sky, forcing myself to look at him, at Jamie, at the others. At reality. “It’s a way through,” I say.
Silence falls, heavy and absolute.
“A way through where?” Sonny asks, though I think he already knows.
Words lodge in my throat. I don’t want to say it. Doing so will make it real. Saying it means I have to face what it actually means.
