Chapter 86: ENTWINED WORLD

Emily's POV

I didn't know why I grabbed him, but I could still see the cold distance in his eyes. I just wanted him to look at me like he used to.A desperate ache bloomed in my chest. I just wanted him to look at me the way he used to.

I wanted him to treat me with the effortless warmth that used to define us, instead of this crushing, suffocating tension that hung heavily between us. His dark, questioning gaze dropped to my hand and then rose to my face, and suddenly, the words caught in my throat. I found myself completely unable to speak.

“I... I just wanted to know if... if...” I stammered, the sentence dying before it could even begin.

Staring into those familiar eyes—eyes that used to look at me with nothing but absolute devotion—the brutal truth settled into my soul: I was desperately searching for the old Charles. The Charles who had loved me fiercely. The Charles whose heart I had carelessly thrown away.

The weight of my own guilt turned my hands weak, and my grip slowly loosened around his arm until my fingers dropped away entirely.

“I was just going to ask if you would be available anytime next week,” I lied, forcing a tight, nervous smile onto my face as I tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear to mask my trembling. “I was thinking of starting Elara at a daycare. I need to figure out how to balance being a mom and going back to work for the company.”

“I’ll make sure to clear my schedule,” Charles replied, his voice completely flat and professional. “Just inform me when you’ve picked a date.”

I gave a small, breathless nod. “Good night, Charles.”

“Good night, Emily. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he responded quietly.

He turned on his heel and walked out into the cool evening air. I followed him at a distance, standing frozen at the front door as I watched him mount his car, start the engine, and tear down the dark driveway.

A profound, suffocating silence immediately settled over my heart. The empty house felt larger, colder. It felt, with a terrifying certainty, like I was already completely losing him.

Siofra's POV

Panic vibrating through my veins, I couldn't stop pacing a frantic, manic circle around the bedroom floor. Across the room, Alda just sat completely still, staring out the window, looking entirely checked out—as if she had absolutely no interest left in whatever remained of this human life.

It made absolutely no sense. We had been trapped inside these four walls since we fled the company, and the portal had stubbornly refused to open. The very air in the room felt thick, heavy, and deeply wrong.

“How long are you planning on pacing around?” Alda’s hollow voice finally broke the silence, her dull eyes tracking my movements.

“Alda, I don't know!” I cried out, my voice cracking with total frustration. “I just... I feel it in my gut. Something is terribly wrong. The portal should have manifested by now.”

“Then why are we sitting here waiting around for the portal to come to us,” Alda said, her gaze sharpening as she stood up. “We can open it ourselves.”

“But you remember the warning Elba gave us!” I fired back, my hands flying up in exasperation. “Forcing the portal open from this side without a cosmic anchor will cause absolute chaos! It could entwine both of our worlds and realms together, fracturing the dimensions. It will make everything a thousand times worse!”

Alda closed the distance between us, her jaw set with an unyielding, dangerous determination. “I know what she said. But at this rate, we could wait here all night and nothing is going to happen. We need to leave, Siofra. You know deep down in your guts that something is breaking over there. So... are you going to take my hand or not?”

She extended her hand toward me, her eyes boring into mine.

I stared at her palm, my mind screaming at me to refuse, but the dark, ominous weight in my chest pushed me forward. I hesitated for one final, breathless second—and then I took her hand.

We stood perfectly locked in the center of the bedroom, opening our minds and letting the raw, volatile energy reservoir radiating from our combined souls flood outward. The air began to warp, the familiar, violent vacuum of wind starting to rotate into a circular portal. But the moment the rift tore open, a cold wave of horror hit me.

Something was deeply, fundamentally wrong with this portal.

The moment the vortex stabilized, it didn't glow with its usual steady light. Instead, it began emitting violent, erratic flashes of blinding illumination—like lightning exploding right inside the room. Alda and I immediately exchanged a look of pure terror.

Suddenly, the wind surrounding the rift went violently aggressive. The suction force multiplied instantly, howling like a dying beast. Realizing the danger, I screamed and tried to violently pull my hand away from Alda's to break the connection and shut it down—but the rift held. The magic had broken out of our control.

“Alda!” I shrieked over the deafening roar of the storm.

The swirling wall of wind creating the portal was widening by the second, expanding outward like a ravenous monster. We both threw ourselves backward, our boots skidding against the floorboards.

“Siofra, what is happening?!” Alda screamed, her face pale with absolute horror. “Why is it getting so big? What is that light?!”

“I don't know, but we need to make it go away right now!”

Before the words could even leave my mouth, a massive, vibrant back-draft of concussive wind erupted from the vortex. The gravity in the room shattered. The atmospheric pressure dropped instantly, and the vortex began violently sucking everything in the room toward its glowing center.

I gasped in pure shock, lunging forward to grab Alda's arm, pulling her body against mine as we clung to each other for dear life. The vacuum was immense. The wind ripped the desk chairs, the heavy books, and the clothes from the wardrobe straight into the air, spinning them in a chaotic, blinding orbit around the expanding rift.

My mouth hung open in terror as I watched the sheer physical destruction. Then, a horrific, screeching sound echoed over the roar—the heavy wooden frame of the bed was being dragged across the floorboards straight toward the mouth of the chaos.

Instinct took over. Pulling Alda with every ounce of strength I had left, I dragged her toward the adjoining bathroom. We tumbled inside, and I slammed the heavy door shut, throwing the deadbolt just as the wind slammed against the wood.

“We have to close this portal down from the inside or it’s going to pull the entire building into the void!” I panted, pushing Alda further back against the tiled wall, away from the rattling door.

But just as the panic reached a fever pitch... everything went dead silent.

The howling stopped. The rattling ceased. The vacuum vanished.

Alda squeezed my arm, her breath hitching in the quiet. “What... what happened? Is it gone?”

I don't know,” I whispered back, my heart hammering against my ribs.

Slowly, tentatively, Alda reached out and unlocked the bathroom door, pushing it open.

When we stepped back across the threshold, the sight before us was absolute devastation. The bedroom was completely trashed, the furniture pulverized. But it wasn't just the broken wood that made my breath catch—the floor was covered in wet mud, shattered tree branches, and wild elven leaves that didn't belong to this world.

We took a trembling step further into the debris, and that was when I saw it.

A slumped, battered figure was groaning on the floor, using the remains of the shattered wardrobe to painfully pull herself up. As she slowly rotated her torso toward us, the air left my lungs completely.

My breath seized as I locked eyes with that striking, unmistakable shade of blue.

Elba.

How on earth... how was she physically here, in the human realm?

“Elba?” Alda called out, her voice a fragile, shocked whisper.

Alda broke out of her paralysis, stepping over the ruined furniture and making her way toward her, while I just stood rooted to the spot, my brain entirely short-circuiting at the sheer, impossible chaos of the room.

“Alda...?” Elba choked out, her voice laced with agony. “Is that... is that really you?”

She tried to take a single step forward, but her knees buckled, and she collapsed heavily onto the concrete and wood splinters.

“Siofra! She’s bleeding!” Alda’s panicked, echoing scream finally jolted me out of my trance.

I rushed forward, dropping to my knees beside them in the dirt. My stomach dropped into a cold abyss as I looked down. Thick, dark crimson blood was rapidly spreading across the floor, staining the wreckage

beneath her.