The barrier between the Void and Outside was like a vacuum of time and space in which nothing could penetrate. It swallowed everything. Sylvie forgot about Yelena and the rest of Derleth for that split second. All she could hear and feel was her heartbeat and the sound of her own breath the moment she felt those green tendrils of magic slip through the void.
Then darkness.
Overwhelming and complete.
Sylvie was bent and tugged through herself, twisted like a knot until —
She was alone again in a vast world, populated by horrors. The stars were beautiful, but there was something so very wrong about them. Apocalyptic. The end of everything.
The language spoken was like listening to hieroglyphs of some unknown feral being, maybe not even sentient, except for the repetitive manner in which they chanted. Was it a spell?
So many eyes everywhere, and they were all watching her. Rising to the surface of their black slimed skin. Millions of them. Everywhere. Wanting to devour. The need to feast on anything in this place between time and space.
There was no time.
There was no space.
It was all an illusion meant to drive a person mad.
But they were here, she knew it. She was watching them through the eyes of some unknown monster. Were they the same? Were they all different? Odin's beard, help her. She was drowning in the space, and time was threatening to take her again. Lost in the dark with these non-linear beings who —
They knew she was there.
She let go, and inside the Void, she came back to her body, tripped over her feet, and curled into a ball. Those images would stay with her.