The silence in Xylos was deafening. The chaotic energy that had threatened to tear the world apart was gone, replaced by a fragile stillness. The shattered crystal formations lay scattered like fallen stars, and the bioluminescent flora pulsed with a softer, almost mournful light.

  Sera stood amidst the wreckage, panting, her body aching, but a grim satisfaction settling in her chest. She had stopped the immediate threat, but the cost… the cost was a world scarred and broken.

  “Well,” Bartholomew rumbled, his shadow form flickering slightly, “that was… intense. You know, for a Tuesday.”

  Sera managed a weak smile. “Tell me about it. I think I pulled a few muscles I didn’t even know I had.”

  She reached for her communicator, her fingers fumbling slightly. “Thorne? Thorne, can you hear me? Xylos is… stable. For now.”

  The response was immediate, but it wasn’t Thorne’s voice.

  “Sera? Is that you? Thank the sweet merciful heavens!” It was Agent Miller, her voice tight with relief… and a raw edge of fear.

  “Miller? What’s wrong? Where’s Thorne?” Sera asked, her heart sinking.

  There was a long pause, filled only with static and the faint crystalline whispers of Xylos.

  “Thorne… he’s… he’s gone, Sera,” Miller finally said, her voice choked with emotion. “Something came through one of the rifts… something big. It… it took him. And a lot of other agents.”

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  Sera’s blood ran cold. The hungry darkness Fitzwilliam had described. It had reached the DAP.

  “The rifts… are they still opening?” Sera asked, her voice barely a whisper.

  “Worse,” Miller replied. “They’re converging, Sera. All over Bumblebrook. And… and the things coming through… they’re not just hungry. They’re… changing things. Reality is… unraveling faster than we can contain it.”

  Unraveling. The word echoed the Ink-Stained Guardian’s chilling promise. He hadn’t been the ultimate threat. He had been a harbinger.

  “What about Fitzwilliam? Esmerelda? Page Turner?” Sera asked, her voice filled with a desperate hope.

  “We… we haven’t been able to make contact,” Miller said, her voice trembling. “Communications are… unreliable. Sera, you need to come back. Now. Bumblebrook… it needs you.”

  The weight of her choice pressed down on Sera, heavier than the shattered crystals of Xylos. One world saved, another teetering on the brink. Her friends, her bizarre, beloved hometown, facing an unimaginable horror.

  “I’m on my way, Miller,” Sera said, her voice hard with determination. “Tell me how to get back.”

  “The portal… it’s unstable,” Miller warned. “The energy surge… it disrupted the connection. We’re trying to re-establish it, but…”

  Another voice cut in, cold and familiar. “Looking for a way home, Shadow Weaver?”

  The Ink-Stained Guardian’s voice echoed through the communicator, laced with a chilling triumph.

  “You may have disrupted my plans for Xylos, child,” he continued, his voice sending a shiver down Sera’s spine. “But your interference has merely accelerated the inevitable. The rifts are opening, the ancient ones are stirring, and Bumblebrook… Bumblebrook will be the first to fall.”

  The communicator went dead, leaving Sera in the eerie silence of a wounded world, the Guardian’s words hanging in the air like a death knell.

  Bumblebrook was under attack. Her friends were in danger. And the only way home was gone.

  Sera looked at Bartholomew, his glowing eyes reflecting her own grim determination.

  “Looks like we’re walking, Barty,” she said, her shadow powers coiling around her like a protective shroud. “And we’ve got a long, chaotic road ahead of us.”