Lucen kept his arms folded. Not tense. Just measured. He hadn't spoken since the encounter with the entity. Neither had Varik. They hadn't needed to.
The silence between them was the useful kind, the kind that came after something incomprehensible, when both parties knew they couldn't quite describe what had happened.
His system had stopped chiming. That was almost more unsettling than the alternative.
[Status: Passive Sync — Core Proximity: 94 meters]
[System Behavior Normalized]
[Environmental Behavior: Deliberate]
The lift passed through a final layer of light, and everything changed.
There was no dramatic threshold, no shift in gravity or magic pulse.
Just… stillness.
The core chamber opened around them like the inside of a broken cathedral. The walls rose in geometric tiers, covered in latticework that glowed with lines of pale violet and deep blue.
