The moment the ghost stopped moving, the cave exhaled.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
The pressure that had been crushing my lungs eased, the fractured walls knitting themselves just enough to stop collapsing, the screaming hum of hostile reality fading into something like reluctant silence.
The frozen thing that had once been our jailer cracked down the center, purple ice splintering outward in slow, inevitable fractures.
And behind it—
The portal opened.
It wasn't gentle.
It didn't blossom or unfold or invite us in with light and warmth. It tore itself open like a wound in the world, a vertical slash of violent violet that split the cave floor to ceiling.
Space folded inward around it, edges blurring, depth becoming meaningless. Looking at it made my eyes ache, like trying to focus on something that refused to agree on where it existed.
Kent was the first to break the silence.
