The air changed the moment North crossed into the lower levels of the tower.
It wasn't heat or cold. It was pressure. A dense, crushing presence that pressed against her skin and slid along her bones, as if the space itself was trying to remind her that she did not belong here. The walls around them were no longer built stone or reinforced alloy. They were grown. Layered slabs of blackened material fused together by laws rather than matter, pulsing faintly with a rhythm that felt uncomfortably close to a heartbeat.
Lyrate did not slow.
She moved at the front like an advancing calamity, her hand brushing the floor once before roots exploded outward. Thick, dark tendrils of living creation bored through the ground and walls alike, splintering structures before enemies even fully manifested.
They descended level by level.
"This is it," she said quietly.
