Cracks

Cedric stared at Elara, his fists clenching at his sides as a deep, unshakable frustration gnawed at him.

She was changing.

It had been happening ever since he disappeared.

At first, he thought it was just the shock of the battle, the exhaustion from surviving yet another close encounter with death. But as the days stretched into a week, Cedric saw it—felt it.

Elara was different.

She had always been strong-willed, relentless in her pursuit of power, but this… this wasn't strength. It was desperation.

She had been pushing herself harder than ever, as if the mere act of stopping—even for a moment—would shatter something inside her. She barely slept. She barely ate. She spent hours training, reading, searching for information on those vortexes. He had watched her shoulders tighten, her movements grow sharper, her words shorter.

And it all started when that man—when Luca—had fallen into the abyss.