The vertical shaft of Floor Thirteen dropped into an abyss where ambient illumination ceased to exist.
Stagnant strata of purple-black necrotic miasma clung to the vertical basalt walls like wet grease, coating the stone in a slick film.
Every hundred paces of lost elevation increased the atmospheric weight against the chest, thickening the air with the alkaline stench of pulverized marrow, and old iron left to corrode in subterranean humidity.
Fifty paces above the subterranean floor, the Disaster-class Dragon flared its massive obsidian wings, banking its heavy frame toward a broad shelf of black shale.
Its talons gouged deep, smoking furrows into the brittle rock as it ground to a halt, refusing to advance a single pace further down the spiraling incline that descended into the darker belly of the chasm.
