The laughter coiled through his consciousness like smoke threading through still air, carrying weight that had nothing to do with volume and everything to do with presence. Raze felt it more than heard it, the sound existing in that strange space between thought and sensation where normal sensory categories broke down entirely.
His meditation wasn't voluntary anymore. The pull happened with inexorable certainty, like gravity asserting itself on a falling object. The room around him, solid and real just moments ago, began losing definition at the edges. The weight of his body against the floor became abstract, theoretical, a distant fact disconnected from immediate experience.
