The sub-basement did not announce itself.
No threshold marker. No ceremonial descent. No warning beyond the subtle way the air thickened as Galathea Brooks stepped past the last functioning light and into something that did not quite qualify as darkness.
It wasn't dark.
It was… absent.
The corridor behind her still existed in the way memory does-- structurally intact, logically present-- but already losing weight. Like something she could recall but no longer return to with certainty.
Her hand hovered briefly near the wall, not touching, just mapping.
Nothing pushed back.
Nothing resisted.
And that-- more than anything-- felt wrong.
The threshold didn't stop her.
It registered her.
Not as intrusion. Not as error.
As something expected.
The shift came without spectacle. No tremor, no collapse, no visual distortion dramatic enough to justify the word opening.
And yet-- something aligned.
Clean. Immediate. Precise.
