The last click from below did not echo.
It settled.
That was the most unsettling part of it. The sound did not bounce around the chamber or fade into the stone as an ordinary noise would have done. It seemed to sink straight into the floor, into the black crystal, into the pillars and rails and the very bones of the hidden room, until the whole chamber felt as though it had swallowed something alive and was now holding it in its depths.
Fang remained very still.
The line of glowing symbols around the console slot brightened once, then steadied into a thin band of white-gold light. The chamber around them did not change in any visible way, yet the pressure in the air altered. It became tighter, more exact, as if some invisible structure had just locked itself into alignment.
Ren's hand was still around Fang's wrist. The contact was not restrictive. It was a brace, a measured anchor, a reminder that whatever the room had become, Fang was not encountering it alone.
