The stairwell spiraled downward, its descent unfurling with an eerie slowness, as though time itself had forsaken its usual pace.
Each step grew progressively heavier, as if unseen forces gripped their very ankles, pulling them toward an unavoidable reckoning.
A sharp chill began to coil around Anthony and his teammates, not the crisp cold of winter's breath, but a deeper, more unsettling chill, the kind that seeped into bone and marrow, a cold born of the unnatural, beyond the grasp of mortal understanding.
And when they finally emerged, it was not into a room, nor a battlefield, nor any tangible realm.
They had entered a void.
A boundless, infinite expanse of inky blackness stretched out in all directions, interrupted only by colossal, fractured platforms of stone, floating like the remnants of dying worlds.
