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Standing at the intersection of two ravaged avenues, hair whipping around her, Taly spread her arms wide as golden magic exploded out of her in a vortex that shot upward to slam into the sky.

Calcifer was dead, but she could fix it. The Universe didn’t get to take him. Not without a fight.

She looked up into the spiraling dark—into the jagged tear she’d carved into the heavens.

Into the Neither—that place between this life and what came next.

If Calcifer was in there, she’d find him. And she’d drag him out.

She shoved her magic into the rift with a scream—reckless, furious, wild. The cobbles beneath her feet trembled, then lifted, pulled into the rising storm of wind and aether.

Defying the laws of nature and the divine came with an added bonus—it made her a beacon.

Harpies fed on aether, and she was radiating it in waves. All she had to do was throw it around, burn bright enough, and they came, flocking like moths to a flame.

It was thrilling. Exhilarating. Every flick of her wrist, every wild spell she cast, unleashed more brilliance, more destruction.

And it didn’t burn down. Just kept pouring in, too much, too fast, but she didn’t care.

Let it burn.

Let itallburn.

The sky groaned as the tear widened, a gaping maw of darkness. Harpies spiraled helplessly into it, their cries lost in the wind.

The pain was blinding.

Every inch of her throbbed, every cell straining as she fought to keep them together—fought to keep herself from scattering like stardust while the power raged outward.

Tears streaked her face, but then, somewhere in the haze of agony, a sound bubbled up—a laugh, raw and unsteady.

The pain softened into something else.Joy.

What was her body, her flesh, compared to this?

It was everything, this power. It was her air, her bread, her manna.

It was pure time energy ripping through her, like she’d grabbed a live wire of eternity.

To endure it, to be consumed by it, was a blessing.

And there was still more.

She could feel it there below the threshold of her subconscious—an endless, untapped ocean that was being trickled into her drop by drop, guided by the voice whispering through the howling storm.

More.

The ground rumbled with a sound like thunder as shattered glass, loose stones, even bits of metal were yanked into the swirling vortex, vanishing into the churning sky.

On either side, the buildings shook, their windows rattling. Taly’s reflection wavered as time began to warp.

It started with her at the center, the effect rippling outward.

The years peeled away from the canvas of reality like layers of paint. Pavement surfaced beneath the cobbles. The buildings rose taller. The air blurred with the bright, artificial lights of a city as starsteel and stone crept over plain wood construction.

The Tempris of yesterday blurred with the here and now as high above the harpies spiraled to their deaths.

More.