Ellie forced herself upright as her vision cleared. The horizon was moving — not with wind, but with shapes. Wanderers. Dozens of them leaking from distant ruins and fractures in the earth. Still far off… but racing toward them in a way that felt horribly wrong.
"Veyr…" she whispered. "We have to move — or they'll kill us."
Veyr didn't bother arguing. He could feel it too. His Glyph wouldn't respond — not by will, not yet — and Rhen's glyph flickered uselessly across the unconscious man's wrist. He stepped across the dust, scooped Ellie into his arms, then — without hesitation — bent again and lifted Rhen with his free hand.
"I'm not leaving him," Veyr growled.
"Where do we run?" he asked, eyes sweeping the land.
Ellie tried to think through the pounding in her skull. South, east, north — Wanderers in every direction. Hundreds of meters away, yes… but closing fast. Too fast. Veyr himself was barely upright.
"West," she croaked, clutching his shirt. "Go west — now."
Veyr obeyed immediately, pushing his exhausted body past its limit. His boots slammed across cracked ground; Ellie clung to him, dizzy from the jarring motion. Behind them, dust plumes rose as the Wanderers bounded forward — not stalking, but charging, like a tide preparing to drown them.
The land split around them in old scar-lines. Ellie kept her eyes forward, willing her heartbeat to stay quiet, until something shimmered ahead. A flicker. Colors twisting in the air.
"…Oh no," she breathed. "Veyr — there's a Rift. We're trapped."
It stretched across their path like a vertical wound — shimmering, singing softly in a pitch just outside the human ear. Anything that entered that light didn't come back out.
She felt Veyr's body go tense beneath her — then, to her shock, he ran faster. His breathing harsh, deliberate. He looked back once — just once — and Ellie followed his gaze: a dark flood of Wanderers, hundreds strong, ripping across the earth toward them.
He didn't hesitate.
Better the unknown than certain death.
With a final surge, Veyr hurled himself forward — Ellie and Rhen cradled against him — and leapt into the heart of the Rift.
Color exploded in all directions. The world turned inside out. Something heavy wrapped around Ellie's chest, crushing the scream in her throat. Time stuttered — stopped — then lurched forward again as a thousand shards of light swallowed them whole.
And the wasteland vanished into nothing.