Chapter Text
The crowd was still roaring when the world shattered.
Mira felt like someone had ripped her heart out of her chest. One second Rumi was there, panting, smiling that tired smile that meant "we did it," and the next...
Nothing.
Just air where her best friend had been standing.
"Rumi?" Zoey's voice was small and broken. "RUMI?"
The seal of Honmoon pulsed in the air, glowing with that iridescent light that was supposed to signify victory. Mira looked at it and understood. Understood with a horrible, absolute clarity.
Honmoon rejects anything that doesn't belong in the human world.
"No, no, no, no..." Zoey ran toward where Rumi had been, as if she could find her if she looked fast enough. "Mira! MIRA, do something!"
But Mira, her best friend, the one who always had answers, just shook her head. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.
"It closed," she whispered. "The seal... it closed completely."
Zoey dropped to her knees. "She... she knew. She knew this would happen and she didn't say anything."
The stage lights came up. The music started again; the show had to go on. The audience thought it had all been special effects. No one noticed the two shattered girls lying in the middle of the stage.
No one noticed that the world had just lost one of its saviors.
And no one—absolutely no one—noticed the exact moment Rumi crossed the barrier between worlds and fell into the abyss.