The final stretch of passage opened into a chamber that shouldn't have made sense, and yet somehow did, the way a dream made sense while you were still inside it.
No walls, not exactly. The space simply stopped resembling stone at some indefinable point, the carved spirals giving way to something Rama's eyes kept sliding off whenever he tried to focus on it directly, structure without edges, presence without shape.
"Careful," Wirasena breathed, stopping well short of the chamber's center, his lamp held low as though bright light itself might disturb something better left undisturbed.
Sekar stepped further in than either of the men, her attention sharpening the way it always did when a genuine problem finally offered itself for proper study.
"This is the same signature," she said quietly. "Rama, this is exactly what we picked up from the ancient preserved material, years ago. The readings Dr. Chen's team could never fully classify."
