The ceiling didn't shatter.
It unfolded.
That was the first thing that felt wrong.
Not broken pieces. Not falling debris.
The material itself pulled apart in clean, impossible lines, like something above it was rewriting how it existed making space instead of forcing entry.
Victor stepped back slowly, eyes locked upward. "That's not structural failure."
Camille's voice came thin, almost disbelieving. "It's not pressure from above… it's absence."
The girl frowned. "Absence doesn't do that."
"It does," Camille said, quieter now. "If it's big enough."
The opening widened.
Dark at first.
Not shadow.
Not emptiness.
Something deeper.
Like the idea of space instead of space itself.
And then
Movement.
Not a body.
Not a figure.
A shift.
Like something adjusting behind a surface that wasn't supposed to exist anymore.
Victor's voice dropped. "Dante."
The response came immediately.
Everywhere.
"…Still here."
