The side corridor was four meters wide and went nowhere.
That was the first thing Zeph registered when he stepped through the entrance—the dead end at the far wall, twenty meters of narrow stone corridor terminating in a flat surface that offered no options, no exits, no architectural concessions to the concept of escape.
His brain processed this information and produced a response that took a moment to articulate, which was: this is either very bad or very good depending entirely on factors currently outside our control.
He stood in the entrance for one second longer than was strategically optimal, performing this assessment with the focused attention of someone who understood that the assessment was not going to change the facts but felt that the facts deserved at least one person acknowledging them before everyone moved on.
