Chapter 10: Round Two—Cass Comes Home to Karrath Prime

The shift came without warning.

One moment the neutral chamber existed—stone and sourceless water and six passages leading into dark—and then it did not. The floor tilted sideways at an angle that had nothing to do with physics and everything to do with intent, and the air folded over itself like a page turned by a giant's impatient hand, and Cass had just enough time to register the smell before the terrain arrived around her: rain, and metal, and something chemical and sweet that she had no category for, a smell like burning that wasn't burning, like heat that came from no source she could locate.

Then the water hit.