Chapter 15 #2
There’s no hesitation, no visible calculation, just precise, almost surgical motion as he shifts between positions, redirecting attacks before they land, striking only when it counts.
It’s controlled in a way that feels deliberate, like he’s already mapped out the angles before the fight even began.
And me—
I react.
Not with training.
Not with strategy.
With instinct.
A guard lunges towards Jamie, and I’m already moving before I consciously register it, stepping into the path, blade up, deflecting the strike with a jarring impact that sends a shock through my arm.
The force of it surprises me.
The new strength behind it.
I adjust quickly, shifting my footing, bringing my weight into the next movement as I drive forward, forcing him back just enough to break his momentum.
I’m not graceful. I’m not controlled. But I’m not useless either.
“Stay behind me,” I snap, not looking back.
Jamie doesn’t argue. That, more than anything, tells me how serious this is.
Another soldier closes in from the side, and I pivot, barely getting my blade up in time to catch the strike. Metal grinds against metal, the sound harsh and too loud in the narrow space between us.
The smell hits then.
Iron.
Sweat.
Damp earth kicked up under shifting boots.
Someone shouts—maybe Sonny, maybe Jack—and the sound slices through the clash of weapons as Solan takes down one of the attackers with a force that is almost frightening to watch.
He doesn’t just fight. He overwhelms.
The soldier goes down hard, and Solan doesn’t pause, already turning to intercept another before they can reach us.
“Move!” he barks.
We don’t. We can’t. They’re too close.
Another guard breaks through the line, faster than the rest, and this one is aiming straight for Jamie.
I see it a second too late. “Jamie—!” The warning tears out of me as the guard lunges, hand outstretched.
Jamie stumbles back, slipping on loose ground as he scrambles away, the fear finally breaking through the composure he’s been holding onto.
Jack moves to intercept, but he’s blocked. Sonny is tied up with another attacker. Caly shifts, but the angle isn’t right.
That leaves me.
I throw myself forward.
The impact is rough, unbalanced, my shoulder slamming into the guard hard enough to knock him off trajectory. We both go down, the ground hitting harder than expected, and I scramble to regain footing.
Pain flares along my ribs, but not enough to stop me.
The guard recovers fast, too fast, his blade coming up in an arc that I barely manage to block in time.
The force drives me back.
Too close.
Too strong.
My grip slips.
For a second—just one—I lose control of the movement. And that’s all it takes.
The chain at my neck snaps. I feel it before I see it. A painful tug, then nothing.
The medallion is gone, and my stomach drops.
The pendant hits the ground somewhere to my right, skidding across stone and dirt, catching briefly on a root before sliding free again.
The guard sees it, his attention wavering. That’s all I need.
I drive forward hard, knocking his arm wide, disrupting his reach just enough to break his line of attack. “Jamie!” I shout, my voice rough, urgent. “Grab it and run! Hide!”
There’s no time to explain. No time to think.
I have to trust him. Trust that he’ll move. Trust that he’ll understand.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him hesitate, then move.
Good.
The guard shifts again, trying to break past me, and I slam into him a second time, using everything I’ve got to keep him between me and Jamie, to block, to delay, to stop him from reaching that small, sliding piece of metal that suddenly feels like the most important thing in the world.
Before me, the fight continues in bursts of motion and sound.
Sonny lets out a breathless laugh as he ducks under another strike and counters, his blade flashing quick and brutal. Jack grunts as he drives an attacker back, his movements less refined but no less determined.
Caly slips between them all, controlled, efficient, every movement placed exactly where it needs to be.
And Solan… is a force of nature.
He barrels through one of the guards with a roar that feels more physical than vocal, sending him crashing to the ground before turning on the next with relentless precision.
The balance shifts, slowly, then all at once.
Jamie’s hand closes around the medallion.
The world changes.
Lightning cracks.
Not distant. Not overhead. Right here.
The strike is blinding, a jagged spear of white tearing through the darkening sky and slamming into the ground with a force that rattles everything.
The air snaps. Pressure builds instantly, thick and suffocating, like the world itself is drawing breath.
Every head turns. Even the guards hesitate.
The medallion flares in Jamie’s hand.
Not light.
Not heat.
Something else.
The markings across its surface shift violently now, no longer subtle, no longer hidden, rearranging in patterns that hurt to look at directly.
Another strike follows. This time closer and louder.
The ground trembles beneath our feet.
“What the hell—” Sonny starts.
The sky tears. There’s no other way to describe it. One second it’s there—darkening green, heavy with storm—and the next it isn’t whole anymore.
A jagged line splits across it, sharp and wrong, like something has dragged a blade through reality itself and left the wound open.
The tear widens. Slowly at first, then faster. The air distorts around it, pulling, warping, bending light and sound in ways that make my head spin if I look too long.
“Back!” Solan roars.
We move instinctively, regrouping, using the moment—the confusion, the shock—to finish what’s left of the fight.
The remaining guards falter.
One goes down under Sonny’s blade. Another under Jack’s. Caly disables the last with a movement so quick, I almost miss it entirely.
And then—
Silence.
Not complete. Not peaceful. But the immediate threat is gone.
My chest heaves as I drag in a breath that doesn’t feel like enough.
The storm builds overhead. Lightning strikes again and again.
The tear doesn’t close. It grows.
For a few seconds, no one moves. Breathing comes hard and uneven, the aftermath of the fight still humming through my muscles, but it’s not the adrenaline that holds me in place. It’s the sky.
Or what’s left of it.
The tear stretches wider, no longer a thin fracture but a jagged, pulsing wound carved through the green expanse above us. Light doesn’t behave properly around it. It bends, distorts, folds in on itself like the air has forgotten how to exist.
Another strike of lightning rips downward, so close this time, it feels like it hits inside my chest instead of the ground. The crack of it is deafening, but beneath the noise, there’s something else. A pressure. A pull.
The medallion hums.
Jamie still holds it clutched in his hand, his knuckles white around the metal, his eyes wide and fixed on the sky like he couldn’t look away even if he wanted to.
“Jamie,” Jack says, voice rough but steady, stepping closer without crowding him. “Hey. Look at me.”
Jamie doesn’t respond.
I move before I think about it, closing the distance, reaching out just enough to brush his shoulder. “Hey,” I say softly. “Stay with me, yeah?”
That does it. His gaze snaps down, locking onto mine, and I see it then. Not just fear.
Awe.
“What is that?” he asks, and his voice is small in a way I haven’t heard from him before.
I swallow, my throat suddenly dry. Because I know.
Not because anyone told me. Not because I’ve seen it quite like this before. But because something deep in my gut, something instinctive and undeniable, recognises it.
“That,” I say slowly, my eyes dragging back up to the widening tear, “is a rift.”
The word drops, real in a way it hasn’t been before.
Above us, the tear shudders, the edges of it shimmering like they can’t quite hold their shape. The space beyond it isn’t empty. It isn’t dark.
It’s… wrong.
Not this world.
Not this sky.
And my heart… my heart is trying to climb out of my chest.
“Why isn’t it closing?” Sonny mutters, stepping up beside me, his usual edge dulled by something that sounds dangerously close to uncertainty.
“It’s getting bigger,” Jack adds, his gaze tracking the expanding fracture.
Caly steps closer to Jamie, his attention fixed not on the sky but on the medallion itself. His expression is more focused than I’ve ever seen it. “It’s responding,” he says quietly.
“To what?” Sonny asks.
Caly doesn’t look up. “To him.”
That pulls every eye back to Jamie. He stiffens slightly under the attention, instinctively curling his fingers more firmly around the medallion like he’s afraid someone might take it from him.
“I’m not doing anything,” he says quickly.
“I know,” I reply, and I keep my voice steady, grounding. “You’re not. Just… hold it. That’s it.”
Another surge of energy ripples through the air, strong enough this time to make the hairs along my arms stand on end. The temperature drops further, the cold seeping in biting and sudden like the storm is dragging something else through with it.
Behind me, Solan steps forward, his presence anchoring in a way that cuts through some of the rising tension. “We need to move,” he says, voice low but firm. “That thing’s not stable.”
He’s right. Everything about it screams unstable. But I can’t look away.
Because now I can see it. Not clearly or perfectly, but well enough.
Through the distortion, through the shifting light and warped space, there are shapes. Colours that don’t belong here. A sky that isn’t green. A horizon that feels… familiar.
My breath catches. “No,” I murmur under my breath.
The bond flares, reminding me that I’m not alone in my own head right now.
Varek.
He feels distant. Still there and alive, but far enough away that it aches.
My pulse jumps because I know what this is. And that knowledge comes with something else.
Hope.
Bright.
Terrifying.
“It’s not just a rift,” I say, louder now, the words pulling everyone’s attention back to me.
“What do you mean?” Jack asks.
I drag a hand over my face, trying to steady myself, trying to make sense of the way everything inside me is pulling in two different directions at once.
“Rifts bring people here,” I say slowly. “That’s what they do. That’s what we’ve seen.”
“Yes,” Caly says.
“But this one—” My voice falters for a second, and I force it steady again. “This one isn’t closing. It’s not collapsing in on itself. It’s holding.”
Another pulse runs through the air, stronger this time, and the tear shudders wider again, the space beyond it becoming clearer. Clear enough. I take a step forward without meaning to.
“Pax,” Sonny gasps.
I barely hear him because I can see it now.
Not just shapes.
Not just colour.
A sky.
Blue.
Not green.
Blue.
My stomach drops. My breathing shallows. My heart slams so hard, it hurts.
“No way,” I breathe.
Ten years.
Ten years of being here.
Ten years of surviving, adapting, changing into someone I barely recognise sometimes.
Ten years of wanting, of needing, of dreaming about going back. And now… now it’s right there.
I feel sick.
Hope surges so fast, it’s almost painful, crashing into something heavier, something tangled and complicated and a hell of a lot harder to ignore now.
Because Varek isn’t there.
He’s here—fighting, holding the line, and trusting me to do the same.
“Pax,” Jack says, more firmly this time. “Talk to me. What is it?”
I drag my gaze away from the sky, forcing myself to look at him, at Jamie, at the others. At reality. “It’s a way through,” I say.
Silence falls, heavy and absolute.
“A way through where?” Sonny asks, though I think he already knows.
Words lodge in my throat. I don’t want to say it. Doing so will make it real. Saying it means I have to face what it actually means.
But the truth doesn’t care about what I want.
“It’s Earth,” I say.
The words hit the ground between us like something fragile and explosive all at once.
Jamie stares at me. Jack goes still. Sonny swears quietly under his breath. Caly’s focus snaps back to the tear with renewed intensity.
Above us, the rift pulses again, widening, stabilising in a way that makes my skin crawl.
It’s not closing. It’s still opening. And I know, with a certainty that sinks deep in my bones, that this isn’t random or coincidence.
This is a door, and it’s open.
My heart hammers, my chest close to cracking, my thoughts racing too fast to keep up with. Because this… this is everything I’ve ever wanted.
And everything I might have to walk away from.
The bond flares again, stronger this time, a visceral reminder cutting through the chaos in my head.
I close my eyes for half a second, dragging in a breath that does nothing to steady me. When I open them again, the tear in the sky is still there.
Still growing.
Still waiting.
And there’s no doubt left. Not a single shred of it.
“That’s home,” I say quietly.
And for the first time since I arrived in this world, home is staring back at me.