Kael opened his crimson eyes slowly.
The air around him was thick and ancient, heavy with silence. He stood in what seemed to be a vast subterranean chamber—its ceiling loomed high above, supported by tall, worn stone pillars that stretched like the limbs of slumbering giants. Their surfaces were rough, cracked with age, and laced with veins of faintly glowing minerals. Scattered across the ground were shallow pits carved into the stone, from which flickered a dim, amber light, just barely enough to illuminate the space.
Behind him, the portal was already fading.
It pulsed once—its silver light thinning—then again, weaker still, until the passage that had brought him here was no more than a memory. The archway was narrow, barely wide enough for two adults to pass through, unlike the grand, blinding rift he remembered crossing with Liseria and Silvana in the Gray Zone.
Kael slowly turned back around and took in the cavern.
