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Without much fanfare, two figures tumbled from it.

They fell—not gracefully, not quietly, and certainly not willingly. Indeed, Skye was still trying to figure out how the ground had disappeared so suddenly. And why it had been replaced by open air and an uncomfortably rapid sense of impending doom.

Branches snapped as they crashed through the treetops, flailing like a pair of poorly thrown rocks. Leaves scattered, and then—

Skye hit the forest floor first, the impact accompanied by a crunch of underbrush and a strangledoof.

A secondthudto his right indicated the arrival of his brother.

Winded, stunned, possibly concussed, Skye lay on his back for a moment, not knowing up from down, left from purple, as the axis of his world realigned.

It was like passing through ice—whatever had brought them here. His body shook from the cold.

The world came back in pieces: rough ground beneath him, brittle leaves in his mouth, something sharp wedged against his spine.

“Are we dead?” Kato croaked.

Skye grimaced. Everything ached. Nothing made sense. “If we were, you’d be quieter.”

Kato groaned, but the sound came in staggered bursts, like someone skipping through a recording. “Wh—wh—why do I... feel like I’m... b-b-bouncing?”

It wasn’t so much bouncing as… the groundbreathingunderneath them. Each inhale lifted the world in a soundless, deliberate stretch. Each exhale let it slacken again, a barely-there shift that gnawed at equilibrium.

Skye blinked, trying to clear his vision. He must’ve hit his head. Pretty damn hard, apparently. But no—his vision sharpened, and the world stayed wrong.

The ground rippled like warped glass beneath him, shifting when he focused too hard. And the trees—they swayed out of sync, their movements staggered, as if viewed through a fractured lens.

He was sitting up—

No, he wasn’t.

A blink. A skip. And now his hand was in front of him, like the movement had already happened without him.

“I... I... I think... I’m g-g-going to be s—sick…” Kato’s breath came in stutters, his muscles twitching like his body was trying to adjust to something unseen.

“A t-t-tear...” The words came a moment before Skye thought to say them. “We... w-we’re in... a tear.”

The time mages were gone, but the island still bore their mark. The Veil—that ephemeral, unseen lamina that separated visible reality from the void that existed outside it—had grown thin in places, worn down by their spellcasting until tears began to form.

The forest was littered with them. Step wrong, and you could end up somewhere else. Another world. Another time. Or worse, unable to account for the last five minutes to five years of your life.

This was where he’d expected to find Taly.

In the center of the clearing, the tear hung like a jagged rip in the fabric of the world. A blackened fracture, edges glowing with cold light. From it, golden threads unraveled, curling like mist.

Kato swore under his breath, voice shaking. “Shards, w-what the fu-u-ck.” He lifted his hand. Something stretched. White, sticky strands clung to his fingers, connecting him and the ground.

Time itself seemed to stutter, moments repeating, skipping, blurring together. Skye’s head pounded as his vision tried to settle, struggling to see through the flickering haze and the shifting shadows. When it did—

“Kato, s-stop m-moving.”

Scattered across the clearing were remnants—pieces of what had once been people, half-swallowed by winter-worn grass. An arm here, a leg there. Severed heads, mouths frozen in silent screams, lay discarded beneath a thick layer of silk.

A spider nest.

And not just any spider.Blackbanes. Their webs were acidic. Skye could see the white strands bubbling where mist came down to settle. He could feel the burning on his skin.

The nest stretched in every direction. Sheets of webbing draped over the ground. It wrapped around trees, where suspended from the branches hung still, lifeless shapes bundled in white.