The passage beyond the sinking pillar did not slope downward or upward, nor did it offer the familiar reassurance of a straight, predictable path. It moved forward in a way that made distance difficult to judge, as though depth itself had been tampered with. Arios noticed almost immediately that the walls on either side were not truly parallel. They narrowed and widened in subtle, carefully measured shifts—never enough to trigger alarm, never abrupt enough to feel overtly hostile—but just enough that the sense of scale kept slipping through his grasp. The corridor refused to be read at a glance, forcing constant recalibration, as if it were quietly testing their perception rather than their endurance.
The stone here was lighter in color, streaked with faint veins that pulsed at irregular intervals. Not mana exactly, but something adjacent to it. Residual pressure, perhaps. Lucy reached out once, then pulled her hand back before touching the wall.
"It feels wrong," she said.
