The Ashline didn't burn.
It peeled.
With every step forward, the veil shimmered, pulling away in strips too thin to see—revealing not what lay ahead, but what *waited inside* them.
Leon stood first.
Mira to his right, sword already drawn.
Tomas to the left, face pale beneath the soot.
Kairis just behind, her eyes fixed not on the flame, but on Leon himself.
"You don't have to lead," she said.
Leon looked forward. "Yes, I do."
Then he stepped into the fire.
It didn't hurt. Not like heat.
It hurt like memory. A scream. A grave.
A choice not taken.
And then—
—he was through.
The world beyond the Ashline was not the one they'd left behind.
It was colourless.
Not black and white. Not drained.
Just bleached.
As if time had given up painting.
The air felt brittle.
The sky cracked in slow, deliberate pulses, revealing glimpses of something not sky beneath.
Mira followed next.
