Marie controlled the Obsidian Tower with frightening ease.
It moved through the gray expanse like an old predator returning to a hunting ground it knew better than the shadows did.
And with Marie at the controls, the journey became even more absurd.
She followed Lucien's coordinates with a speed that should not have been possible. The route-lattice shifted under her fingers, and the Tower obeyed with the sullen loyalty of a machine that had already accepted her as the least annoying available pilot.
A trip that should have taken far longer—
took half a month.
Half a month of silence, adjustment, observation, and the quiet pain of traveling toward a world Lucien had not seen again with his own living eyes.
Then, at last—
they saw it.
The semi-permeable outer layer of the small world floated ahead like a membrane of dim light. It was beautiful in the way fragile things often were.
And along its edges...
...were monsters.
Black Mass monsters.
