The moment I returned, I knew something had changed.
The air was thick, heavy with the aftershocks of the rupture. My breathing felt labored, as though the very act of drawing oxygen demanded more effort than I could fully spare. I wasn't at House Valemore anymore. The land around me was barren, cracked, stretching toward distant mountains that shimmered with an unnatural light. The colors in the sky seemed slightly off, washed in faint hues of lavender and sickly yellow, as if a painter had accidentally dipped the brush in the wrong palette when rendering this corner of the world.
Alone.
