---
Sekhmet guided Sofia and Natasha through next, keeping enough distance to react if either tried something stupid. Neither did. The seal on their bodies and the unknown waiting beyond the doorway had pressed their confidence down hard enough that even their silence felt cautious now.
Then he crossed the threshold himself.
The world changed.
It did not change with sound. It changed by removing sound.
The void land opened around them vast and unnatural, a silent domain beneath a dark sky that did not behave like a true sky. There were no stars. No moon. No clouds. Just a deep stretch of layered darkness above, endless and strangely calm, as if the heavens here had never been built for weather or time.
