Their footsteps echoed softly across the silent plain of black stone.The air of the underworld felt heavier here so thick it was as if every breath carried the echo of souls whispering between dimensions.
They had traveled far from the ruins of the Black Mirror Palace, until at last they arrived at a place where the dark ground began to quiver as though something alive moved beneath the surface. Before them stood another gate.
Unlike the first, this one wasn't made of obsidian or crystal. It was simply a rift, a gash in space itself, surrounded by a slow whirlpool of deep violet mist. No carvings, no runes, no visible energy And yet the air around it rejected their very presence.
Sylvia halted before the rift and gazed at it in silence.
"The seventy-first floor…" she murmured softly.
She raised her hand, and black chains unfurled from her shadow, slithering toward the swirling void.
The moment the chains touched the mist, they shuddered as if recoiling from being touched.
