The alien entities had barely finished manifesting when the dimensional alarms began screaming across what remained of the Confluence territories. But the threat wasn't coming from the incomprehensible horrors emerging from the Screaming Nexus—it was something far more mundane and infinitely more personal.
Warlord Krex had found Lyralei.
Reed felt the distress beacon through his storm-enhanced consciousness, a pulse of desperate terror that cut through his cosmic fury like a blade. Lyralei—proud, indomitable Lyralei—was afraid. More than afraid. She was being torn apart.
"Father?" Vexara's voice carried an odd note of confusion as she watched Reed's storm-form flicker. "The real players are here. Why do you care about—"
"Because she's your mother," Reed snarled, his attention splitting between the cosmic entities clawing their way into reality and the very human horror playing out seventeen dimensions away. "And because some things still matter, even at the end of everything."
