Three days had passed since the incident in the containment chamber. Three days since Reed had witnessed the impossible—Lord Thorn, transformed and alive, hovering in void-touched splendor opposite Shia.
The memory of what followed still burned through Reed's consciousness, fragmented but vivid: Lysithea's banishment sigil flaring like a miniature sun; the howling of void energies as they tore through the chamber's defenses; Reed's own power erupting in desperate, instinctual protection. Then darkness—not unconsciousness, but something deeper. He had fallen through reality itself, dragging Shia with him through corridors of nothingness until they emerged, gasping and disoriented, in the shadow of their own domain's border markers.
