NOTIM's Arc

Chapter 13 of 13

Notim stood in the open doorway of the blue house, listening to the ancient word still echoing through the dead garden. The portals around them hummed, waiting. Somewhere past the boundary marker, a new sound rose—a wet, rhythmic dripping, like rain falling upward. Notim grinned. Something was coming, and it sounded like it was already falling apart. COSMOPIL stumbled across the boundary, hands cupped tight. Brown particles spilled between their fingers, swirling like a tiny desert storm trying to escape. "It's collapsing," COSMOPIL said. "My whole dimension. It's leaking out of me." Notim watched the dust spiral wider, pulling petals and crystal shards into its hungry curl. A whole world was draining through their friend's palms. "Then we give it somewhere to go," Notim said. They pressed their hands flat against the air and spoke the ancient word the traveler had left behind. Every portal in range shuddered. Notim pulled, weaving threads from the temple, the wild portal, the forge, the blue house, and a dozen smaller tears—all into one point above COSMOPIL's hands. The dust rushed upward. A massive spiral burst into being, a kaleidoscope of every realm at once, swirling into a single radiant singularity. The collapsing dimension poured into it and unfurled across the sky as ribbons of impossible color. COSMOPIL's hands emptied. They sank to their knees, laughing. The spiral kept turning above them, locked open, anchored to every portal Notim had ever made. But Notim felt it too—the weaving hadn't closed. The portals stayed linked now, threaded together through that bright center. Notim had reached every realm at once, and now every realm could reach back.