Chapter 112. Ascend
The world around her twisted.
The portal wasn’t like the usual spatial transfers she’d seen before—clean, elegant, the kind of polished magic employed by someone proficient in space element or the transportation nodes of the Academy.
No, this one was primal, guttural, a ripping tear into reality itself that didn’t just displace the body but tried to peel the soul along with it.
Liana barely managed to keep her footing as she tumbled out the other side, her knees wobbling under her weight. Her stomach flipped like a dying fish; a bile-like taste rose in her throat. She barely refrained from vomiting.
The room she arrived in was anything but ordinary.
Pitch black walls stretched so high into the heavens they vanished into nothingness. They weren’t natural, nor built of stone or wood—each wall was marked with massive glowing runes etched deep into their surface.
The scripts pulsed faintly, like the room itself breathed with quiet, unyielding power. Above, a gigantic holographic orb cast a dim, cold light, illuminating the room in monochrome hues. There were no doors. No windows. Just this endless chamber, silent and terrifyingly vast.
From the tear in reality, the man stepped through after her, stumbling.
"Gods above," he groaned, clutching his gut like someone nursing a hangover. "I hate that type of teleportation. Fucking Heinau and his shitty portals."
Liana narrowed her eyes, immediately cataloging his reaction. "You can’t even control your own means of transportation?"
He coughed, a little embarrassed, scratching the back of his head. "Technically, that wasn’t mine. It was Heinau’s. I’m not used to his... uh, brand of chaos. It gives me motion sickness."