Rodion stepped across the threshold and let the heavy door ease shut behind him. The latch kissed stone with a hushed click, then even that faint sound vanished—swallowed by walls that seemed to drink noise the way desert sand drinks rain. Ahead, a corridor widened into an octagonal hall gleaming with unnaturally smooth surfaces. It felt less like carved rock and more like the inside of some titanic vault. No fluttering torchlight, no raw mana haze. Just a matte, patient gloom that pressed against his optical filters.
His threat index blinked an odd report:
— Ambient mana: negligible
— Temperature variance: 0.9 °C across entire chamber
— Wind flow: none
Not a dungeon chamber, he decided. A measuring device.
Small raised bumps ran along the lower walls—almost pretty, like pearls set into grey marble. At normal speed they'd be easy to miss, but walking at ninety-percent frame slow, he saw the loops of thread-thin sigils connecting each bump. Pressure sensors. Dozens.
