The first thing Holden felt was weight.
Not the gentle, familiar weight of gravity on Earth. This was something else, something that pressed down on every inch of his body like the sky itself was trying to crush him flat. His boots hit solid ground, and his knees buckled for a second before his Rank 3 body caught up and locked solid.
The second thing he felt was the air. It was wrong, thick and heavy, tasting like battery acid. A metallic film coated the inside of his mouth, making him want to spit.
The third thing he felt was the darkness.
The Abyssal Realm was not black. It was worse than black. It was a deep purple that stretched in every direction like the sky itself was an infected wound. There was no sun, moon or stars. The only light came from the portal behind them, a shrinking ring of grey-white light that was already fading as the rift settled around them, along with a faint, sickly bioluminescence pulsing through the walls of the canyon like veins in a living body.
