I felt the shift in the air as each of them crossed the threshold, the subtle pressure change as the field gave way to something else. The portal swallowed sound first, then light, then the sky itself.
The grass vanished beneath my feet.
For a heartbeat, there was nothing.
Then the world moved.
The sensation was nothing like the cave's transit. This wasn't being dragged or flung or compressed through hostile space. This was… guided. Directed. Like the universe itself had decided to pick us up and place us somewhere else with care.
Color flooded my vision.
Purple, deep and layered, stretched endlessly around us. Not the violent lightning-purple of the entity, but something older, calmer. The space felt thick, like we were walking through memory rather than distance. Shapes drifted past in the periphery—fractured geometries, half-formed landscapes, echoes of places that might have existed or might still.
