Chapter 55

Sarah's POV

The light enveloped us like a cocoon, warm and suffocating, but strangely comforting. I clung to Axel, my fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt as the world around us seemed to bend, twist, and then shudder violently. The pull was unrelenting, a force greater than anything I had ever experienced. My heart raced in sync with the rising tide of energy surrounding us.

Then, without warning, it stopped.

The warmth faded. The tugging force released its grip. For a moment, everything was still-silent-as though the world was holding its breath. I opened my eyes, slowly, cautiously, unsure of what I would see. The last time I had emerged from the rift, it had been into a place that wasn't truly real. A place warped by its own darkness. But now, as my vision cleared, I found myself standing in the middle of a sunlit meadow.

The air was fresh and clean, filled with the scent of wildflowers and the soft rustling of leaves in a gentle breeze. I looked around, blinking in disbelief. The sky above was a clear blue, not a trace of the endless void I had been trapped in. The ground beneath my feet was solid, warm with the light of day.

And Axel-he was still here. He was alive.

He stirred in my arms, groaning softly, his hand tightening on mine as his eyes fluttered open. He looked around, disoriented, before focusing on me.

"Sarah..." he whispered, his voice hoarse. "Where are we?"

I gave a shaky laugh, relief flooding me all at once. "I... I don't know," I said, my voice trembling with emotion. "But we're not in the rift anymore." I pressed my forehead to his, the closeness grounding me, reminding me that this was real. This was him.

His fingers brushed through my hair, his touch gentle, almost reverent. "I don't understand," he murmured, still clearly trying to piece together everything that had happened. "How did we get here? How did you-" He stopped, his eyes narrowing slightly, searching my face. "You... you did something. You saved us."

I nodded, my throat tight. "I think we're out, Axel. We're out of the rift."

There was a long, heavy silence between us, the weight of everything we'd been through pressing down on us. The memory of the darkness, of the creature that had tried to tear us apart, the whispers of the rift itself-it all seemed like a distant nightmare now, but I knew it hadn't been. I had been there. I had felt the power of the rift.

But now, we were standing in a world that felt like the one I remembered before everything changed. And yet, something was off. Something didn't sit right.

Axel's hand slipped from mine, and he pushed himself into a sitting position, his eyes scanning the meadow around us. "This place," he said quietly. "It feels... wrong."

I nodded slowly, unease creeping up my spine. "It's too... perfect."

The more I looked, the more I felt a growing sense of wrongness. There was a stillness in the air, a quiet that felt unnatural. The grass didn't move in the breeze as it should. The birds, while present, didn't sing-they only flitted about in silence.

"We need to move," I said, standing up and offering Axel my hand. He hesitated for a moment, studying me with concern, before he took it, pulling himself to his feet.

"Where are we going?" he asked, his gaze scanning the horizon.

"I don't know," I admitted. "But we can't stay here. This place isn't right."

We began walking, our footsteps soft on the grass, the quietness around us unsettling in its completeness. We moved with no destination, just the need to find something-anything-that might help us understand where we were and how we had gotten there.

As we walked, the landscape began to shift in subtle ways. The meadow, once endless and vast, started to narrow, the edges of the grass becoming denser, thicker, as though the world was closing in around us. The trees that had been scattered in the distance began to grow closer, their trunks taller, more imposing, casting long, stretching shadows.

"I don't like this," Axel muttered, his grip on my hand tightening as the air seemed to grow heavier. "This place... it's changing."

I nodded, my own anxiety rising. "It's like we're being pulled deeper into it."

Suddenly, the air grew colder. A chill seeped into my bones, and I felt a familiar presence-an almost imperceptible shift in the fabric of the world around us.

Axel and I froze, our gazes snapping to the trees ahead. Something was moving in the shadows, something tall and dark. I couldn't see it clearly at first, but I could feel its presence-unnatural, otherworldly.

And then, from the darkness of the trees, a figure emerged.

At first, I thought it was a person-a woman, tall and draped in a flowing cloak. Her face was obscured by the hood, but I could feel her eyes on us, cold and unblinking. She moved toward us without a sound, as if the earth itself made no noise under her feet.

"Who are you?" I demanded, my voice shaky but strong.

The figure stopped just a few feet from us. She tilted her head, studying us with unnerving silence. And then, finally, she spoke, her voice smooth and melodic, yet carrying an edge of something darker.

"You are no longer in the world you knew," she said, her words hanging in the air. "And neither of you will leave this place. Not without a price."

Axel's grip on my hand tightened, and I instinctively took a step back, my heart racing. "What do you mean? Where are we? What is this place?"

The woman's lips curled into a smile, but it was a smile that held no warmth, only a cold, twisted amusement.

"You are in the space between worlds," she said, her voice now a soft, haunting whisper. "And here, everything is subject to the will of those who control it."