The first thing Lydia Sinclair's Domain took from me was the floor.
Not physically. My boots were still on stone. But the moment we stepped through the gates, the courtyard of the Harmonyx campus stopped being a courtyard and became an idea of a courtyard. Every surface hummed with a voice too low to hear and too heavy to ignore, and the voice was saying, very gently, that I didn't belong there.
Then the voice found Reika's hand in mine and said that I was holding it because I had been told to.
I felt her fingers tighten.
"Keep talking," she said.
"I'm here. I'm talking."
"Good." Her voice was already further away than it should have been. "Keep doing that."
The courtyard dissolved.
I was standing in a white room.
