The plunge was not a fall in any sense the human body could understand. There was no air screaming past, no impact waiting at the bottom. Instead, Lin and Min-joon were drawn, like threads pulled through the eye of a needle, slipping between the fractures of the marrow world until light itself gave up trying to follow.
When the pull stopped, they were standing.
Not on stone. Not on metal.
On flesh.
The ground beneath them quivered faintly, as though with the slow pulse of a vein running deep under skin. It wasn't wet, but neither was it dry—it had the texture of something alive, something that could, if it chose, twitch them off balance. The air was thick, clotted, as if each breath had to fight to push through layers of invisible resistance.
