Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
The dizzying colors of the portal streaked past Bálint and Adaline.
He tightened his grip around Adaline’s waist as the portal thread beneath them shuddered, unraveling in sizzling cracks of unstable energy.
The thread—a once-glowing ribbon of light—flickered violently beneath them, like the frayed edge of a storm cloud ready to split apart.
“Can you hold it together?” he asked, his voice low but steady.
Adaline shook her head, strands of her brown hair snapping in the wild current around them. Her expression was calm, but her eyes betrayed the storm raging within.
“The energy’s too erratic and unstable—it keeps slipping through my control.” She glanced at the surrounding streams, which pulsed and danced like serpents made of light and heat. “I’ve never felt anything like this,” she said, her voice tight. “It’s alive.”
Bálint gritted his teeth, his eyes sweeping the fractured horizon.
Threads snapped and reformed all around them, like broken bridges between worlds.
Through the cascading light, he caught glimpses of his friends—Zohar spiraling into a streak of blue, Jabir shouting joyfully as he launched off another thread, Alice vanishing in a glimmering bubble of violet light.
“We’re running out of time,” he said. “I’ve been watching the others disappear. There’s a rhythm to it—barely. A thread opens every few seconds. We’ll jump on the next one.”
Adaline’s fingers curled into his shirt. “And then what?”
Bálint met her gaze, his golden eyes burning with resolve. “Then I shift and carry us to safety.”
She exhaled slowly, nodding once. “If you can.”
“I will. I wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” he said.
They held onto each other in silence, neither saying what they both feared—at least what he feared. That they might not make it.
He tried to push his doubts aside as their bodies were buffeted by raw current. The moment stretched until he felt pulled, not only by his fears, but by the cosmic forces around him. A shudder ran through him when the portal groaned, the remaining threads coiling like snakes preparing to strike.
Then—he saw it—an opening.
“There!” he shouted. “Get ready!”
Adaline tensed in his arms.
“Three—two—one—jump!”
The thread vanished beneath them, and suddenly they were weightless—free-falling into a screaming rush of light and sound.
Wind roared past Bálint’s ears as they spun in midair. His arms tightened around Adaline—
—and then she was gone.
“Adaline!” he choked out, horror cracking his voice.
He swung his arms outward, reaching instinctively as her form shimmered and slipped through his fingers in a swirl of silver mist.
His stomach plummeted. A roar tore from his throat, primal and anguished.
Shift, his dragon roared, sensing danger.
Purple and gold scales rippled across his skin as his dragon surged forward and took control. His wings snapped open, catching the wind and flaring to slow his descent. His body elongated, his claws spread, and his tail snapped, slicing the air as he fought to stabilize mid-flight.
“Adaline!” he roared again, his voice now thunderous and deep with his dragon form. But there was no answer—only the soft, strange white mist that was dissolving into the ether.
He burst through a veil of cloud—then froze, suspended in awe for a single heartbeat.
Below him spread a breathtaking isle.
Jagged cliffs jutted from the sea like ancient guardians, their ragged walls draped in mist. Waterfalls tumbled down like strands of spun silver, feeding into glistening rivers that cut through lush green canyons.
The very land shimmered with magic—trees that breathed, rocks that hummed, and glowing lights drifting lazily in the air.
It was beautiful.
And dangerous—if the way his dragon was clawing at the air meant anything.
A sudden shift in the air made his scales bristle. A low hum, almost musical, rose around him—a current of energy he hadn’t noticed until it was too late.
The wind beneath him twisted.
Hard.
A spiraling tunnel of air formed without warning, sucking him in with the force of a vortex.
“What the heck?!” Bálint exclaimed, his wings straining against the invisible pull. But it was like trying to fly against a hurricane.
He was spiraling—no, rocketing—through the tunnel of wind, twisting and diving like a leaf in a storm.
The speed hit him like a fist.
Just like Aunt Cara’s ‘coaster, he thought wildly. The new one she built to look like a spaceship out of control in the amusement park. All the upside-down loops made Roam puke.
Only this wasn’t a ride. This was real—and the ground was coming up fast.
Trees loomed ahead—massive ones, their trunks glowing with pulses of energy, branches stretching skyward like arms.
“Steady—steady—!” he warned his dragon.
“You try being steady! This not roller coaster—this worse! This make me sick!” his dragon snapped back.
Bálint decided to keep his mouth shut. The last thing he needed was to distract his dragon and crash.
At this speed, he wasn’t sure even his dragon could survive.
A second later, he was glad he had when the wind tunnel suddenly sent him tumbling head over tail.
Branches whipped past him in a blur of green and gold.
And then—
Snap!
His body slammed to a stop midair with the wind tunnel still surging past him before it disappeared like it had never been there.
Nausea rolled his stomach. Even as his brain continued to swirl with dizziness, he was able to process that he was hanging in midair—upside down. What he couldn’t figure out was why he wasn’t falling.
His dragon groaned. Bálint winced when he sensed the bile rising in his dragon’s throat. He was sure the poor beast was about to hurl the junk food he had eaten before they left Valdier.
“Don’t puke. Please don’t puke. I really don’t want you to hurl all over the place—” he silently pleaded.
His dragon shuddered and breathed in a deep, steadying breath before exhaling. It was only when his dragon tried to move that Bálint realized that they were stuck.
In something very sticky.
And silken.
And super strong.
“Please no…” his dragon groaned. “I no like spiders.”
Bálint snorted out a choked laugh. “You don’t mind spiders. You don’t like James’s Spider Blaster 5000.”
“I no like James,” his dragon snapped.
Another snort of laughter escaped Bálint.
His dragon was still sore about losing a game of tag due to getting caught when James, Amber and Jade’s little brother, shot him with his newest invention at the Tag Team Adventure.
James had been smart—maybe too smart—when he made the threads dragon-fire proof.
Bálint had been stuck for almost an hour before he was rescued.
He twisted his neck to look around—his wings and legs were tangled in glowing, iridescent webbing stretched between two colossal trees. The silk pulsed faintly, tightening every time he moved.
“Well, this is fantastic,” he muttered, struggling to lift a claw. The web twanged with a threatening hum, responding like a living thing.
His scales shivered.
Not good. Definitely not good.
He took a steadying breath and called out with everything he had left.
“Adaline! If you can hear me… I could use some help!”
But only the wind answered, rustling the elemental trees.
He was alone.
Trapped.
And something in this strange, living world was waking up.
And it had noticed him.
Adaline clung to Bálint like he was the only solid thing left in a world dissolving into chaos.
The dizzying streaks of light blazed past them—threads of magic unraveling like frayed ribbons. Energy snapped and sizzled beneath her feet, alive and volatile, humming through her bones like a song she didn’t know the words to.
Her hands fisted into Bálint’s shirt. She felt him tighten his arms around her, grounding her, anchoring her to something that wasn’t spinning wildly out of control.
“Can you hold it together?”
She shook her head.
Her voice when she replied was steady, but inside… she was unraveling, too.
The energy was too erratic. It slipped through her fingers like water—no, like oil—coating her, clinging to her, but never obeying. It twisted around them in colors too bright to name, pulsing like it had a heartbeat.
“I’ve never felt anything like this. It’s alive,” her voice was tight, barely audible over the rushing void.
But what she didn’t say—what she couldn’t say—was ‘I don’t know how to control it.’
She thought of Alice. Confident. Brilliant. In complete command of her abilities even when chaos raged around her. Was Alice struggling too?
No. No, of course not.
Alice could do anything.
Unlike me.
Alice had grown up on Curizan, surrounded by instructors and power and acceptance. She had been allowed to stretch her abilities, to train, to shine.
Adaline had been hiding in a tiny apartment on Earth until she was seven—afraid to spark, to shimmer, to be anything other than normal.
Even her mom hadn’t known what she was capable of— Not until her father, Adalard, returned with them to Curizan, a world where their people could harness the surrounding energy.
Her dad was like this huge, mythical hero—okay, maybe not that dramatic, but close enough for her—who had appeared one day to claim her and her mother like a storybook come to life. An alien prince in shining armor.
She had powers—but she didn’t feel strong like Alice.
And she definitely wasn’t as confident when it came to using them.
She gritted her teeth and buried her insecurities. Now wasn’t the time.
Bálint’s voice cut through her spiraling thoughts, calm and sure, as if they weren’t skating along the edge of the universe.
“We’re running out of time,” he said. “We’ll jump. When I say.”
His certainty was a balm. She focused on that. On him.
“And then what?” she asked, because she had to say something to stop herself from falling apart.
He looked into her eyes, golden and fierce. “Then I shift and carry us to safety.”
He said it like a promise.
Like he believed it.
Relief flickered inside her—warm and unexpected. She didn’t want to admit the truth. That teleporting… might not be possible. Not here. Not now. Not with energy that felt like it was burning her from the inside out.
She didn’t want him to see that. To know that she felt helpless. Useless.
So she nodded.
“If you can,” she murmured, her voice barely above the roar of the portal.
“I will,” he said. “I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”
Her breath caught as emotion swelled inside her. She closed her eyes for the briefest second, willing his strength into her bones.
Then—
“There!” he shouted.
The portal thread ahead bloomed open, a brilliant flower of white mist, unfolding like it had been waiting for them.
Adaline’s fingers trembled against his chest.
She counted with him.
“Three… two… one—”
The thread dropped away.
The world tilted.
And they fell.
Weightless.
An involuntary scream tore from her throat as the wind rushed past her. She held on—tried to hold on—
But he slipped from her arms.
“Bálint!” she cried, reaching for him, but he was already out of reach—his figure spinning above her, wings erupting in a burst of gold and purple light.
Then the white mist rose.
It surged up around her like a tidal wave of fog. Soft and slow, yet impossibly fast. It wasn’t just surrounding her—it was seeping in.
She could feel her molecules stretch. Scatter. Shift.
No. No, no—
She wasn’t doing this.
At least—she didn’t think she was.
The mist wrapped around her like silk, cocooning her, cradling her body, and pulling her away. It wasn’t teleportation—not hers. This was different. Older. Wilder. Something other was moving her.
She gasped, trying to resist, to pull herself back together—but her limbs didn’t respond.
Her body shimmered, dissolving into a haze of light and energy. She couldn’t feel her fingers. Her feet. Just a rush of heat and starlight, her thoughts spiraling.
Her breath hitched.
“I don’t know how to stop it,” she whispered, tears blurring her vision.
The world turned white.
All light.
All sound.
All everything.
“Please…” her voice cracked as the light consumed her. “Please… please don’t let me disappear.”