The light faded, and this time Jin's stomach didn't lurch the way it had the first time.
His boots hit solid concrete instead of open street, the air around them shifting cooler and staler almost immediately, thick with dust and the metallic tang of standing water somewhere close. A faint emergency light flickered overhead, casting long, uneven shadows across a subway platform half buried in rubble. Faded signage still clung to the far wall, half legible beneath a layer of grime and old cracked tile. A child's shoe lay abandoned near the platform edge, and Jin made himself look away from it before his mind could wander somewhere he didn't have time for tonight.
"That felt different," Jin said, glancing around at the ruined station. "Last time it felt like falling. This one felt aimed."
