The light swallowed him whole and when his vision returned, the world around Albedo had changed entirely.
He stood on jagged stone beneath an endless ceiling of black, dripping with strands of shadow like inverted stalactites.
The air was thick, and smelled faintly of iron and rot. Every sound carried strangely far, his own breathing came back to him in hushed, warped echoes, as if whispered by something unseen.
Ember stood beside him and the shadows seemed to cling to her legs like grasping hands, reluctant to let her move. She pawed the ground angrily, her flames kicking up as her ears flicked toward the faint growls that rolled from somewhere deep within the dark.
Ahead stretched a massive stone corridor, its floor cracked and uneven, walls slick with some kind of black moss that writhed when he passed his eyes over it.
Faint silver etchings, runes older than anything he recognized, ran sporadically across the stone, pulsing weakly, as if struggling to stay lit.
