The landscape twisted around them.
Up was no longer up. The air shifted temperature every few steps. They moved forward, but each time Argolaith glanced behind them, the path had changed—no longer a winding bridge of obsidian, but a stairwell of stars descending into black fog.
The Gate wasn't just bending reality.
It was rearranging memory.
Argolaith stayed in the center of the group, his senses stretched thin, the cube in his storage ring pulsing in slow, measured beats. He hadn't called it out. Not yet.
It was watching, just as he was.
They approached a fork in the floating terrain.
To the left, a staircase that twisted through an orchard of trees with eyeless faces on their trunks, each tree weeping ink.
To the right, a corridor of mirror-shards, flickering with glimpses of impossible futures.
The ruined temple lay beyond both.
"Right," Ren said. "Clean footing. More predictable."
Caelene glanced toward the orchard. "And less alive."
Argolaith narrowed his eyes.
