The marble wall of the Floating Gallery was slick, cold, and entirely the wrong place for a floor.
Mara adjusted her grip on her scavenged spear, her boots fighting for purchase on the vertical surface. Gravity wasn't a law here; it was an invasive hook pulling at her sideways, a constant, stomach-turning tug that tried to peel her off the stone and drop her into the three-hundred-foot abyss to her right. Across the yawning gap, the far wall was a jagged landscape of floating tar-globules and lapis-blue water spheres, drifting through the atrium like slow-motion asteroids. The air didn't just move; it hummed with the sound of displaced mana—a low-frequency pressure that vibrated in Mara's teeth.
The Wednesday shift had turned into a meat-grinder before they'd even cleared the first landing.
"Horizontal contact! Three o'clock—the ceiling!" Maddie's voice cut through the hum, though her "three o'clock" was actually straight up into the void.
