The tear in reality shivered, edges fraying like flesh pulled too thin. The monarch pressed harder, its three jaws unhinged wide, spewing a resonance that made the alien sky above tremble. The crystalline constellations flickered, so collapsing into black gaps as though swallowed by its sound.
Mira staggered to her feet, dragging Elena up. Her lungs burned, the cold tallic air cutting sharper than knives. The ground wasn’t stone as she thought—it was glassy, pocked with veins of liquid light that pulsed in rhythm with her own heartbeat, as if the land was alive and aware of their intrusion.
Elena clutched her chest, wheezing. “We didn’t escape—we just... crossed over.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Mira hissed. “As long as it keeps that out.”
But the monarch wasn’t deterred. Its stitched body pressed deeper into the threshold, ichor sizzling where it touched the glowing rift. The tear wailed—an unearthly sound, like tal bending and bone breaking at once. Each push widened the wound. Hatchlings clawed over its shoulders, squeezing through, their shrieks echoing into this new world.
The glass ground beneath Mira’s boots shuddered. Cracks spiderwebbed outward from the tear, glowing blue fire seeping through. This place didn’t want them. Couldn’t hold them.
“Run,” Mira snapped. “We move until we find cover.”
They sprinted across the obsidian plain. Behind them, the sky rippled—the stars themselves shifting like watchful eyes. Black towers rose in the distance, jagged spires that reached toward the fractured constellations. Their surfaces glowed faintly with the sa blue light, as though tethered to the wound behind them.
A shriek split the air. Mira glanced back. A hatchling had forced itself through, its body twitching under the alien sky. It staggered, screeched—and then mutated. Its limbs elongated, sprouting glass-like talons that reflected the constellations. Its jaw split further, unhinging into a four-way maw.
Elena gasped. “This place is changing them.”
Mira’s stomach dropped. If the hatchlings adapted here... there would be no outrunning them.
The first mutant hatchling launched itself forward, glass talons slashing across the ground, sparks hissing with each impact. More followed, pouring through as the monarch’s bulk forced the wound wider. Its three skulls pressed against the threshold, one cracking into the new sky, dripping ichor that scorched the black stone.
They reached the base of a tower. Its surface wasn’t solid—it shimred, rippling when Mira pressed her palm to it. Beneath the surface swam shapes: silhouettes with too many limbs, faces pressed against the mbrane as though waiting to be let out.
Elena’s voice shook. “This is worse. We’ve run into another cage.”
Mira’s jaw clenched, her eyes darting from the pursuing swarm to the alien tower. “A cage’s still better than a pit.”
She shoved her hand into the shimring wall.
The surface rippled violently, pulling at her arm, sucking her forward with a force stronger than gravity. Elena scread as Mira was half-swallowed.
The monarch’s hand burst through the tear behind them, claws scraping the plain, reaching.
Mira turned back once, eyes locking on the horror breaching their world.
Then the wall swallowed her whole.
Elena, trembling, had no choice but to follow.
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