The spatial tear sealed shut with the dull, concussive thud of an iron hatch closing against a pressurized hull.
Prince Rhys sank three inches into the spongy, black-brown peat of Floor Twenty before his footing found solid ground.
The atmospheric transition between the Spire's upper plateau and this lower depth was jarring.
The air was a thick, stagnant suspension of fine volcanic soot and sweet, sickening rot, hot enough to dry the moisture from his throat within seconds.
The swamp carried a thickness that made breathing feel like inhaling something semi-solid, each breath coating his lungs with moisture that tasted like mold and death.
To the west and north, the horizon was broken by the serrated silhouettes of the Obsidian Ridge, where active calderas vented steady plumes of black ash into a perpetual twilight sky.
Below those ridges, the terrain dropped into the Great Blight Swamp.
