Chapter 93: IN BETWEEN REALMS

Xender's POV

It took me a long, excruciating moment to even begin processing the words that had just left her mouth. But as I stood there in the quiet of the dining room, my heart hammering a frantic, painful rhythm against my ribs, I flatly refused to believe it. She was standing right here in front of me. She was warm, she was real, her skin had just been flush against mine—so why on earth would she have to go?

Even if she had truly died six months ago, I had convinced myself that her miraculous return meant she had come back to stay. I had already tasted the suffocating, soul-crushing agony of losing her once. There was absolutely no way in hell I was going to lose her again.

I just couldn't survive losing her a second time.

Driven by a sudden, frantic wave of panic, I dashed out of the kitchen and sprinted up the stairs after her. I pushed open the bedroom door and found her sitting on the edge of the mattress. She looked so utterly small, so completely out of it, her face draining of color until she looked devastatingly pale.

The sight fractured something deep inside me. I moved across the room and carefully sat down on the mattress right beside her. Reaching out, I gathered her cold hands into mine, squeezing them tightly, but she still wouldn't bring herself to look at me. She kept her eyes glued to the floor, her shoulders rigid.

“Alda... please, look at me,” I pleaded, my voice cracking under the weight of the raw desperation bleeding through me.

Slowly, painfully, she lifted her head, finally letting her gaze lock onto mine. But the profound, crushing hopelessness swimming in her brown eyes only made a heavy sadness anchor itself in my chest.

“I don't care if I only have a single minute or a split second left with you,” I said, the words pouring directly from my soul as I stared at her. “Even though I want an eternity... even though I want a forever with you... no matter what the universe throws at us, I will choose you over and over again, Alda.”

Moving closer, I brought my hands up to tenderly cup her cheeks. The moment my skin touched hers, her hands traveled up to wrap tightly around my wrists, anchoring herself to my touch. A tiny, heartbreaking smile broke across her lips, cutting through the bitter tears that had suddenly clouded her vision.

I leaned forward, my heart aching with a profound tenderness, and pressed a soft, lingering kiss against her wet eyelids, wishing I could physically absorb her pain. When I pulled back a fraction of an inch, she leaned even further into my hands, tilting her head to press a soft, desperate kiss right against my palms.

“I love you, Xender,” she whispered, her voice trembling so violently it ripped through my chest. “I love you so much that... you are the absolute only reason I want to find a way to live. But I don't want to leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere. I don't want you to pause your entire life because of—”

“Shhhh. It's okay,” I shushed her gently, cutting her off before those agonizing, final words could fully leave her lips. I couldn't bear to hear her speak about an end.

I pulled her tightly into my embrace, wrapping my arms around her waist as I buried my face in her neck, my fingers running through her soft hair in slow, soothing motions.

“We will figure things out, Alda. I promise you, we will,” I murmured against her skin, my chest heaving. “So please... just don't ever push me away again.”

She didn't answer with words. Instead, she wrapped her arms around my neck with a fierce, crushing strength, holding onto me as if she were drowning. And right there, in the quiet safety of our embrace, I closed my eyes and sent a silent, desperate prayer into the dark, begging whatever forces were listening for just one real chance to make her happy.

Elba's POV

My eyelids felt like blocks of solid lead. No matter how hard I fought, I couldn't seem to force them open. But when I finally managed to crack them slightly, a sudden, blinding flash of white light slammed into my retinas, sending a sharp spike of pain straight to my brain.

What in the world...? Where am I? What is all this noise?

The sounds were coming from a distance, muffled but echoing unnervingly in my ears. I took a shallow breath, and the air that filled my lungs didn't smell even remotely familiar. There was no scent of earth, no magic, no crisp elven air. It smelled artificial. Sterile.

A wave of panic surged through me as memories began to violently piece themselves together. The tornado. The roaring, violent storm of wind that had ripped through everything. I could swear I vividly remembered seeing Alda and Siofra right before the crushing darkness had consumed me entirely.

Ignoring the throbbing pain in my head, I forced my eyes wide open, desperate to take in my surroundings. But my brain completely failed to grasp what I was looking at.

I was dressed in bizarre, loose-fitting clothes, and I was lying on a weirdly structured bed that felt incredibly thin, yet strangely soft beneath my weight.

And then there was that noise. A sharp, rhythmic, agonizingly consistent beep... beep... beep...

I followed the sound with my eyes and discovered a strange, flashing machine sitting right behind my headrest. Attached to it was a clear, hollow vine made of plastic, and it was pierced directly into the back of my hand, feeding fluid into my veins. Why was everything so profoundly alien? Where the heck was I, and who had brought me to this place? Was it Alda?

Terrified of being trapped, I yanked the tube from my hand and pushed myself out of the bed. The moment my bare feet kissed the freezing cold floor, a massive, violent wave of dizziness washed over my mind, and a shocking, agonizing pain exploded deep within my lower abdomen.

My vision blurred. I stumbled blindly, my balance snapping as my body began falling toward the floor. Squeezing my eyes shut, I braced myself for the painful impact against the hard ground—but it never came.

Instead, a pair of incredibly strong, warm arms caught me in mid-air. I was forcefully pulled upward, my back flaring with heat as my body leaned heavily against a solid, muscular chest.

“Wow—take it easy, or you're going to completely reopen your stitches,” a deep, unfamiliar voice rumbled right above me.

A completely foreign scent hit my nose—not the scent of an elf, or a spirit, or a beast. I gently opened my eyes, my gaze climbing up to meet the face hovering right above mine. The stranger’s hands were wrapped firmly around my waist, keeping my trembling body anchored and upright.

I froze. His eyes were a striking, piercing gray, gleaming like the full moon glowing against a shadowy sky. His sharp, angular facial structure belonged to a creature I had only ever heard about in legends and studied in ancient elven books.

A human.

A sudden, breathless amazement washed over me. I couldn't believe how incredibly handsome he was. His solid frame, the deep resonance of his voice... Are all human men this breathtakingly good-looking?

Unable to control my curiosity, I found myself studying the lines of his face. My hand moved entirely on its own intuition, reaching up until my palm gently pressed against his cheek, my fingers tracing the line of his jaw. His gray eyes widened slightly, an amazed, captivated expression taking over his face as our gazes locked in a breathless, suspended moment.

“You have such beautiful eyes. Like a sea goddess,” he whispered, his voice dropping to a low, reverent murmur.

The comment instantly snapped me back to reality. Sudden panic flared in my chest. I violently backed away from him, my foot shuffling against the tile as I stumbled backward until the edge of the bed caught the back of my knees. I gripped the mattress for support, my chest heaving as I kept a fierce, defensive eye on the human figure in front of me.

“Right... I need to check on your abdominal injury,” he spoke up, his demeanor shifting back to a calm, professional tone as he took two cautious steps toward me.

Seeing him advance, my defensive instincts kicked in completely. “Stay back!” I shouted, my voice echoing off the walls. “Don't come any closer to me!”

“It's okay, I promise. I'm your doctor,” he said, holding his hands up peacefully, a warm, reassuring smile spreading across his face. “I’m the one who saved your life yesterday.”

But I wasn't buying a single word of it. I didn't trust this realm.

“I said, stay back!” I lashed out fiercely.

A spark of raw magic ignited deep within me, and I let the full force of my power shine brightly through my eyes, making them glow with an otherworldly light. The human’s face instantly lit up in pure, unvarnished shock. Following his panicked gaze, I realized that my ambient magic had gripped the heavy wooden chair sitting next to the bed—it was now levitating in mid-air, floating dangerously right above his head.

“Oh my God... okay! You don't have to... look, I mean absolutely no harm,” he stammered, his gray eyes darting nervously to the floating furniture before locking back onto me. “Alda asked me to look after you until she returns. I swear.”

The sudden mention of Alda’s name picked my interest instantly. The defensive fog in my mind cleared.

“You know Alda?” I questioned sharply. I stood up from the bed again, taking two calculated steps toward him, demanding an answer.

The moment I stepped forward, he immediately took two hurried steps backward, his eyes tracking the floating chair that practically followed his every move, hovering directly above his skull no matter where he went.

“Yes! Yes, she's my friend,” he replied quickly, his voice tight with a nervous tremor.

“Good. I need to speak to her immediately,” I commanded, my voice cold, carrying the absolute authority of my bloodline. “Tell me where to find her.”

“Okay, okay. I will call Alda over right now,” he said, a nervous, sweating smile curving his lips as his gaze traveled back to my glowing eyes. “But... can you please get the chair away? You really don't want that falling on my head, do you?”

I studied him for a long moment. Letting him go wouldn't cause any real harm. I was fully aware from my studies that humans were physically fragile, weak creatures.

“Fine. But you had better keep your word,” I warned. I let my breath out, breaking the magical connection. The heavy chair dropped instantly, landing with a loud thud on the floor. I turned and quietly sat back down on the edge of the bed.

The human let out a massive, ragged sigh of relief, running a hand over his face. “I'm Dr. Mike, by the way. What's your name?”

He was trying to make small talk, trying to ease the tension, but I didn't have the time or the patience for human pleasantries. A sudden, terrifying realization hit my mind, making my stomach drop. The tornado. I had completely forgotten the mechanics of the storm. The violent dimensional waves had picked up both my body and Siofra's body—but the rift had only been able to vomit me out into this room.

That meant the vortex had either dumped Siofra’s physical body here in the human realm, or it had dragged her back to the elf realm.

“I'm Elba,” I said firmly, staring at him as if he couldn't comprehend the gravity of the situation crashing through my mind. “And Elba needs to talk to Alda now.”

“Okay, okay. I’m calling Alda, just give me a second.”

With that, he quickly turned and exited the room, the door clicking shut behind him. I was left alone in the quiet, staring at the wood, desperately hoping that Alda and Siofra would just walk through that door so we could leave this alien place.

Alma was already a catastrophic threat to our home, but a wild, rogue tornado wind capable of sucking things up and throwing them across realms meant something far worse. It meant that Alda and Siofra sharing a single soul within one body while crossing back and forth between realms had fundamentally fractured the fabric of nature. They were the reason the storm had risen.

We needed to figure out a way to fix it, and we needed to do it now—before the tornado fully breached the borders and tore this entire realm apart.