They emerged from the swirling currents like ghosts clawing their way back to the realm of the living.
One by one, Victor and the others broke through the surface of the cold water, gasping for air as the glistening veil of the waterfall roared down behind them.
Sunlight kissed their soaked forms unlike the world they had just escaped which was bathed in eternal twilight.
Victor pulled himself onto a rock ledge and stared up at the sky. Real, blue sky.
They were out.
Aeri Fan groaned as she rolled onto the mossy bank. "I never want to see another floating rock again."
Brin flopped beside her. "Or upside-down mountains. Or gravity that makes no damn sense."
"I feel like… I'm going the wrong way even when I know I'm not," Mirael stumbled as she tried to stand and immediately veered left when she meant to go right.
"Yeah…" Victor nodded. "Our bodies got used to that world's reversed motion system. Muscle memory's gone full traitor."