Rhea wasn't so lucky.
The shockwave threw her sideways into a pile of collapsed support beams. She grunted, bracing herself with an arm to keep from getting buried entirely. Nothing pierced her, nothing crushed her — but the impact was enough to leave her stunned for a second longer than she liked.
The tear didn't collapse.
It expanded.
A pillar of warped air rose from the ground to the ceiling, shimmering like heat haze but dense enough to distort every object behind it. The reflection Cain had been reaching for staggered inside the distortion, as if shoved aside by whatever force had pushed outward.
Then the second shape appeared.
Unlike the reflection, this one wasn't clear.
It wasn't humanoid at first.
It wasn't anything.
Just a mass of bent space — like a smear of glass, like a shadow given weight. It was the wrong color, the wrong texture, the wrong shape. Nothing about it should've existed in a space with rules.
