Northern crawled downward, his limbs shattering rocks as he descended, moving with astonishing speed despite his massive frame.
His molten eyes glowed. His vision was strange—he could see everything in streams of red and heat signatures: the layers of the wall, the terrain, all of it an overlapping gradient between red and yellow. Even as the wall breathed in, he watched it fade to yellow, then breathing out, it surged back to deep red.
And the closer he got to the next layer of the black canyon, the sharper, deeper these heat signatures became. Northern got the feeling he was nearing the reason why the walls could breathe.
He reached the fourth layer finally. To his surprise, there was no other presence, no attack from any smaller beings. There was simply one monster in this layer, and it was up ahead. Northern's chest tightened. He pressed forward.
