The Nexus didn't open like a door.
It yielded.
As Kael stepped through the outer threshold, the stone softened beneath his feet—liquid and solid at once. The air changed, no longer still but vibrational, like a held breath or a chord just struck.
The rebellion followed behind, quieter than they had ever been.
They had expected stone.
What they found instead was a corridor of shifting color and impossible geometry. The walls shimmered with memory threads—lines of light pulsing softly with each step. Some threads flashed faster when Kael passed, others dulled to black. The Nexus was alive. Not with awareness, but with reaction.
"It's responding to you," Lira said, her voice low. "Your presence is reactivating paths."
Kael didn't answer immediately. He reached out and brushed a thread with his fingertips. It flickered, then stabilized.
"I know this place," he murmured. "Not from memory. From structure."
Corren moved cautiously behind them, eyes scanning the ceiling, the walls, the floor—anything that might shift or bite. "Are we even inside anything real anymore?"
Kael paused at the next junction. The corridors here bent at angles that made no spatial sense, turning back on themselves or spiraling outward into lightless voids. But he didn't hesitate.
He turned left.
"How do you know that's the way?" Corren asked.
"I don't," Kael said. "But Rin did."
Lira stepped closer to Kael, her voice hushed and urgent. "The Nexus bends to emotional intent. If your mind splinters—so will the path. If you doubt, if you hesitate—it'll fracture around you."
Kael nodded.
His eyes fixed ahead.
"I won't fracture."
The air rippled.
A low hum began to build through the stone, like the walls were remembering something terrible. Shapes flickered at the corners of Kael's vision—not ghosts, not illusions.
Memories trying to reassert themselves.
He moved faster.
Behind him, the rebels kept close, eyes wide with awe and fear.
The Nexus swallowed them whole.
And the real war began.