“Hold it together,” she whispered, trying to keep her voice steady. “You’ve done harder things… sort of. You can do this.”
But she hadn’t done harder things. Not like this. Not hurtling through an inter-dimensional wormhole barely held together and fraying further by the second.
Her gaze darted to her friends. Roam, Jabir, her cousin, Adaline, and Bálint?—
“No, no, no!” she gasped as another strand snapped just beyond her reach, flinging Roam and Spring away from her into a spiral of dark green. They vanished in a heart-pounding blink, the hole disappearing before she reached them.
“Roam! Spring!” she cried.
A strangled sob tore from her throat as the current buckled beneath her feet. Her body whipped forward. She gritted her teeth, weaving her hands in desperate sigils, trying to re-weave the threads of the portal before it collapsed entirely. She poured her energy into the task, but it fizzled like static against rain. The energy here was strange—slippery, different. Nothing held. Nothing worked.
“Come on, come on!” she pleaded. “Listen to me. Let me fix this. Please.”
Threads snapped like twigs in a firestorm. Light spiraled. Sound roared. Her heartbeat drowned everything else.
Zohar disappeared in a rush of silver. Then Jabir. Then Amber and Jade.
Alice cried out, reaching for a thread when it crossed over hers.
It shattered on contact.
“Why isn’t it working?” she sobbed, her voice swallowed by the roar of the collapsing portal.
“BÁLINT!” she screamed when she saw him ahead. He was struggling to hold on to Adaline, the two of them bound together by a shared current of energy. Their eyes met.
“Alice!” he shouted, reaching for her.
She pushed forward, arms outstretched. Her fingers brushed his. There was a spark of connection—and then she was pulled by a separate thread that yanked her away.
“NO!” she screamed. “Don’t leave me!”
Adaline and Bálint vanished in a spiral of starlight.
Alice twisted midair, her chest aching, throat raw. Her hands continued weaving instinctively, trying to catch hold of something, anything. Her breath came in ragged gasps. Panic swelled inside her, clawing up her throat.
“Stay calm. Focus. Find the rhythm,” she told herself, trying to remember her dad’s teachings, but the words were hollow.
Nothing worked. It was like trying to sing underwater.
Suddenly, a bright white mist surged around her, blinding and thick. It rushed toward her like a living thing, a wave of silence amid the chaos.
She heard a voice—Phoenix?—crying something behind her. A warning. A plea.
Then nothing.
The mist swallowed her whole.
The threads vanished.
The light disappeared.
She was falling.
“Mom! Dad!” she screamed, reaching into the black.
Her stomach twisted as the ground rushed toward her.
“Please, please let this be a dream. Let me wake up. I want to go home. I want to go home.”
