The doors didn't open with a click this time.
They peeled back. Slow. Heavy. Stone scraping metal like it hadn't moved in a decade.
Lucen stepped through first.
Then stopped.
His boots met smooth stone, flat and pale. But what caught him wasn't the floor.
It was the space.
The chamber stretched wide, far beyond what should've fit beneath the drift. The ceiling was so high it vanished into mist. The air smelled clean. Cold. Like glacier wind, but still.
Dead center?
A lake.
Perfectly round.
Flat as glass.
Not a ripple.
Lucen stared for three seconds before muttering, "Okay. That's ominous."
Varik stepped up beside him, scanning the space like he was reading a page that didn't want to be read.
"That's not water," he said.
Lucen frowned. "Looks like it."
"It's mana. Liquid concentration. Condensed to mimic fluid form."
Lucen crouched near the edge. "So if I fall in—?"
"You'll die."
Lucen stood back up. "Cool."
The silence settled again.
Then, movement.
