Yara stumbled forward, her vision blurring as the world around her twisted and shifted. She tried to breathe, but each inhale felt shallow like the air itself had become too dense to pass through her lungs. Panic clawed at her, but she bit it back, forcing herself to focus. The people she had been fighting had all disappeared, even their bodies were nowhere to be seen. Where was the dragon?
Her gaze darted around, desperate to find him. But the forest was different now. The trees, once tall and towering, had bent unnaturally, their trunks gnarled and twisted as if they'd aged a thousand years in the blink of an eye. Branches hung low, their leaves curling in on themselves. Even the ground beneath her feet squished like mud, yet it was dry, cracked like a desert floor.
She spun around, trying to find some semblance of a path, but every direction looked the same—a dark, foreboding maze of twisted roots and suffocating fog.
