The hum in the chamber deepened as Doran descended into the sublevels.

Each step sent echoes through the hollow corridors, a rhythm that matched the pulse of the old infrastructure beneath Westline’s industrial spine. The lower she went, the less the world obeyed physics—gravity thinning, air bending around the heat of re-energized circuits.

She moved without hesitation, her form flickering between the physical and the digital. Where the architecture had collapsed, she simply stepped ...