Chapter 6
The Separation
Kaelen reaches a trembling hand out to touch Elara's face, desperate to confirm she is real. Their fingers almost brush. But time runs out. The rift collapses with a violent snap, pulling Kaelen back into the void. Elara gasps, alone in the quiet woods, his steady alien heartbeat still thumping inside her chest. She touches the pendant, now warm and pulsing with a rhythm not her own. The memory of his eyes haunts her. She knows she has to find him again.
The air in the forest tasted wrong. Not spoiled, exactly, but unfamiliar—like static electricity and something metallic, something that made Elara’s teeth ache at the roots. She pressed a hand to her chest, feeling the steady double-beat beneath her ribs, and tried to slow her breathing.
*His* heartbeat. Still there. Still thumping in perfect, impossible rhythm against her own.
She had stumbled away from the clearing where the sky had torn open, where the alien warrior had appeared with a weapon in his hand and devastation in his eyes. She had run until her lungs burned and her legs trembled, until the trees thickened around her and the strange glowing flora had vanished, taking with it the smoke and the screams of a battle she still couldn’t comprehend.
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