The darkness did not consume them.
It parted.
The moment Liora crossed the threshold, the suffocating void shifted, peeling back like something alive making way for her presence. It wasn't light that replaced it—not truly—but a dim, ambient glow that revealed just enough of the space ahead to understand one thing clearly.
This place had been waiting.
The air inside felt different from the Deep Border. It wasn't unstable. It wasn't fractured. It was… controlled. Every inch of space held a quiet precision, like a world that had already decided what it was meant to be and refused to become anything else.
Liora slowed.
Not from fear.
But from recognition.
"…I know this place."
Her voice was softer now, almost distant.
Cairis stepped in beside her immediately, his presence steady but tense, his gaze sweeping across their surroundings without pause. "From where?"
Liora didn't answer right away.
Because the answer didn't feel like a memory.
It felt like certainty.
