The staircase ended in a door—massive, ancient, carved from a single piece of black stone that seemed to drink in the light. Runes covered its surface, glowing with a dull red light that pulsed slowly, like a heartbeat. Victor stood before it, his hand pressed against its surface, feeling the power that radiated from beyond.
He pushed, and the door swung open without resistance, as if it had been waiting for him.
The final chamber was vast beyond comprehension. Where the upper floors had been measured in dozens of feet, this room stretched for hundreds of yards in every direction. The ceiling disappeared into darkness above, and the floor was made of a material Victor didn't recognize—something that seemed to exist in multiple dimensions at once, shifting and flowing beneath his feet.
And at the center of the chamber stood the source of it all.
