The profound, heavy silence of Oblivia was suddenly shattered as they passed through the Gate of Mnemnos, replaced by something new, something far more unsettling. The sound was a single, slow, rhythmic...
Drip.
Then another.
Drip.
Then a third.
Drip.
It wasn't the sound of water. It was a thick, viscous, almost suffocating noise, a sound so heavy with meaning it felt like it was dripping directly into Andrew's consciousness. The air beyond the gate was no longer just heavy with melancholy; it was saturated with a profound, aching sense of loss, a palpable void that pressed in on him from every direction. The atmosphere was so thick with the conceptual weight of nothingness that it felt like breathing was an act of pushing back against a suffocating pressure. It had no scent, no temperature, no tangible quality to ground him in reality, only the pervasive, chilling sensation of not existing.
