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A flicker of warmth pierced the cold.

Then, something solid wrapped around her, yanking her backward through the void.

The empty vastness fractured. The weightless drift was gone.

In its place came a rush—like being pulled and pushed at once.

Behind her, Calcifer surged, driving her forward.

He was huge—so much more massive than she’d ever seen. And this was still only a fragment. The bulk of his mass was kept outside the Weave. Transforming was simply a matter of rethreading himself through dimensions, stitching matter onto space and time like thread onto fabric.

A shifting mass of black ribbons, writhing and unfurling without end, stretched beyond sight into the void. Taly—what remained of her—hovered at the eye of the storm, a spark of rapidly fading gold nestled amidst the black.

Chrono-stasis had a limit. She could stall her heart for only so long before her soul could no longer be rejoined with her body.

Up and up, they tore through the darkness. The surface still seemed impossibly far.

At a certain point, warmth came back into her chest. Not the warmth of life—but of him. The man on the other side of that string, pulling her back.

The bond flared to life in a surge of heat. It seized her, hauling her upward.

With Calcifer pushing from behind and Skye pulling from above, the light at the surface grew brighter.

And brighter.

But not fast enough.

The ache in her soul sharpened, pulling taut, stretching thin.

Life loomed closer, but all she felt was what wasn’t there. Her body. Her breath. The hollow wheresheshould have been.

The clock was ticking down.

The bond wavered.

Calcifer shoved—hard. Skye yanked her forward. Together, they wrenched her into the light.

And then—pain.

It was the first sensation.

Chapter 43

The ground shook.

“What is that?” Skye asked. Taly’s lips were pale—as pale as the hand he clenched in both of his.

He’d felt her. Through the bond, he’d felt her holding on.

“No, no, this is good,” Ivain insisted as the room around them trembled. “The bigger the aether pool, the louder the collision.”

“What does that mean?” Skye snapped.

“She’s coming out of chrono-stasis.”

“Shards, I knew I should’ve packed away the antiques with a time mage in the house,” Sarina muttered, darting around the room to rescue anything fragile.

The walls groaned, cracks spiderwebbing across the plaster. Light fixtures swung wildly. Objects rattled off tables, some shattering, others vibrating so intensely they disintegrated into dust.