The descent into the gate was like a transition of essence. As Ren Hanshin led the two thousand survivors off the rusted decks of the Kashima Maru and on the ash-slicked piers of the inner sanctum, the world finally surrendered its color.
There was no blue here. Even the sapphire light of Haru's core seemed to struggle, its radiance compressed into a tight, frantic orb that barely illuminated the ground at her feet. The Grey Sanctum was a sprawling, silent metropolis of fossilized architecture. Bone-white towers, some spiraling miles into the bruised violet sky, rose like the teeth of a dead leviathan. The streets were paved with crushed calcium and solidified shadow, and the air, if it could still be called air; it was a stagnant mist of Unspoken Names.
