The world had fallen silent. Ava's breath came in shallow gasps, her body crumpled against the rubble-strewn ground, each inhale a battle, each exhale a surrender. Her powers—once vast, commanding, terrifying—were now nothing but dying embers, fading into the ether. Beside her, Lucas lay unconscious, his chest rising and falling in a slow, agonizing rhythm. His face, bruised and bloodied, was a shadow of the fierce protector she had always known him to be.
Above them, the sentient being loomed, its form a swirling mass of darkness, an ever-shifting storm of malice. Its victory was nearly complete, its hunger for destruction insatiable. It towered over them, tendrils of shadow reaching out like claws, dragging the last fragments of the Abyss into its core. Reality itself warped and twisted around it as though the world was breaking apart in slow motion, and all hope was vanishing with it.
