The climb ended where logic gave up.

Hale and Gray emerged from the labyrinth’s last corridor into an open plain of air and data — a space that wasn’t a space, suspended inside the dome’s heart. There was no floor anymore, only translucent scaffolds of energy that shimmered with each step. Beneath them stretched the city, inverted and fractured, its lights reflected in impossible directions like glass turned inside out.

The storm had changed.

Where before it had pulsed with cold, ...