Chapter 119: The Regent’s Audience
The roaring cheers of the crowd were still echoing in their ears when the world dissolved into pure, white light. There was no sound, no feeling of movement, just a sudden, overwhelming brightness that swallowed everything.
For a split second, Ryan felt like he was being gently pulled apart, like a thread being unraveled, and then just as gently woven back together.
When his vision returned, he was no longer in the grand, noisy arena of the Crucible. He was somewhere else entirely.
He stood with Scarlett, Emma, and Zara in a place that made no sense. It was a room with no walls, no ceiling, and no floor. Everything was an endless, soft white, like standing inside a cloud that went on forever.
The ground beneath their feet felt solid, but it looked like mist. The air didn’t feel like air; it had no temperature and no smell. It was perfectly, impossibly still.
"Okay," Emma said, her voice sounding small in the vast emptiness. She was already scanning their surroundings, her strategic mind trying to map a place that had no landmarks. "This is... new."
Zara was staring at her datapad, which was displaying nothing but a stream of error messages. "Fascinating," she breathed, a look of pure wonder on her face.
"The laws of physics as we know them do not apply here. We are outside of normal space-time. This place shouldn’t exist, and yet, here we are. I need to take so many notes."
Scarlett didn’t say anything. She simply moved closer to Ryan, her hand instinctively resting near the hilt of her Shadowfang Dagger.
Her eyes darted around the endless white, searching for a threat in a place that had nothing to search. She was a guardian, and even in a place outside of reality, her duty was clear.
Ryan looked around for their fourth companion. "Where’s Chris?" he asked.
A quiet chuckle seemed to resound in his mind. The big one is enjoying his victory feast. He earned it. But this conversation is not for him.