An Extra's Rise in a Romance Fantasy Novel-Chapter 32: Into the Bead [2]

The fall started the moment the bead swallowed me.

There was no warning. No pull. No shift in weight. One heartbeat I was standing in Elijah’s cottage, bead raised to my eyes. The next heartbeat I dropped straight out of the world.

An overwhelming deluge of pure, incandescent light rushed at me from every conceivable direction. It was not gentle, cohesive light, but thick, violent bands of color that streamed past like torn ribbons of existence.

Red did not fade, but brutally folded into brilliant, electric blue. Gold bled into a painful, shrieking violet. These ribbons twisted around me in the void, never quite touching, yet feeling acutely present, almost alive, almost curious about the sudden arrival of flesh and bone. My stomach did a devastating lurch, and the familiar markers of orientation dissolved. I was immediately lost, unable to tell if I was truly falling or floating, or if the entire space around me was in agonizing motion while my own body remained fixed and helpless at its core.

Then, with an abruptness that stole the breath from my chest, the reality I was experiencing flipped.

My body was caught mid-descent, hanging motionless in the non-air, as if snagged by invisible, colossal hands. There was no longer any ground beneath me, and certainly no sky above. There was only an endless, searing wash of brightness that stretched out like a colossal, shattered rainbow. My arms drifted slowly away from my sides, already feeling distant, my fingers numb and unresponsive. My heart, an erratic, trapped bird, hammered a frantic rhythm in my throat, each beat a painful, desperate plea for solidity. Every breath I managed to take came in a sharp, shallow gasp that did little to soothe the building panic.

I tried desperately to ground myself with my own voice, to cry out a name or a question, but the attempt produced nothing but a thick, dry choke.

A soft hum settled around me, vibrating through my bones. For a moment it felt like I was inside a bell someone had just struck. The sound faded. The stillness returned. And out of nowhere, gravity grabbed me again.

I dropped.

No stop. No pause. Just another plunge through color and light. My own voice tore out in a choked gasp as wind roared past my ears. I couldn’t see my limbs. Everything was a smear, a streak. The bead didn’t feel like an artifact anymore. It felt like a throat swallowing me deeper with every fall.

Then the fall stopped—again.

Suspended. Weightless.

This time no light followed me. Only quiet. Thick, heavy quiet that crawled into my skin. I drifted like a leaf with no direction, no breeze, no sense of up or down. My vision blurred at the edges, then cleared just enough for me to see a single dot of darkness ahead.

The dot grew.

And grew.

And swallowed everything.

When the last bit of light died, I hit the ground hard.

The impact slammed through my ribs. Air punched out of my lungs in a wheeze. I lay still for a moment, ears ringing, cheek pressed against something cold and grainy. Dust? Sand? I couldn’t tell. The darkness around me wasn’t normal. It felt heavier, like ink wrapped around the world.

I pushed myself up slowly, palms shaking.

A thick mist curled across the floor in lazy coils, brushing my ankles. The place smelled faintly of metal and something burnt. My eyes adjusted bit by bit, shapes forming where there hadn’t been any before.

The sky didn’t look like a sky. It stretched infinitely high but carried the same depth as the night above any countryside. Stars scattered everywhere, bright, sharp, like someone threw a handful of shattered crystals across a void. No moon. No clouds. Just the cosmos staring back at me. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

A shiver ran through me.

This wasn’t a world.

It was a dream someone carved open and left abandoned.

I took a cautious step forward. The ground didn’t echo. It didn’t even crunch. It simply accepted my weight like a sponge and settled. The mist parted quietly. My heartbeat felt too loud for a place like this.

Then I saw it.

The sword.

It lay half-buried in the dark sand a few paces ahead, the blade wrapped in thick black smoke that curled and twisted as if it breathed. It wasn’t glowing. It wasn’t calling out. It simply waited, patient and still, like it had all the time in existence to be found.

My chest tightened, but I still walked toward it.

Each step felt heavier than the last. The mist curled tighter around my ankles, as if testing me. I swallowed hard, crouched, and reached for the hilt.

The moment my fingers touched it, the mist recoiled.

Then every inch of space flipped upside down.

My vision spun so fast my stomach twisted. One second I was standing. The next I was inverted, body bent backward, feet above my head as if the world had turned into a reflection and forced me into its shape. Blood rushed to my skull so violently I swore my eyes would burst.

Gravity multiplied in an instant.

My spine bent with a sickening crack. My ribs screamed. My arms shook, locked in place by pressure I couldn’t fight. The sword glued itself to my hand, the metal cold enough to bite into my skin.

Pain carved through me like someone driving nails into every joint.

A strangled sound tore from my throat. I tried to breathe, but the weight crushed my chest. My fingers twitched uselessly. Spots exploded across my vision. My jaw clenched until I heard a pop.

Then the pressure doubled.

My back arched.

My knees snapped downward in the wrong direction.

Something hot surged up my throat.

I coughed blood.

It sprayed out in a messy arc, drifting upward—no, downward—no, sideways. I couldn’t tell anymore. Everything was wrong. Everything twisted. The air bent around me like warped glass.

The scream ripped through me before I realized I was the one making the sound.

And I couldn’t stop.