The door disappeared before Liam could reach it.
One moment the pale maintenance panel remained behind him, its edges burning with the gold-white formation Narissa had activated. The next, light washed across the stone and erased every seam, hinge, handle, and locking mechanism until Liam faced an uninterrupted wall.
He stopped with one hand raised.
For several seconds, he simply stared.
Then he pressed his palm against the stone.
"Narissa?"
His voice carried farther than it should have.
No answer came from the other side.
No guards struck the door. No alarm sounded. He could not hear the engineers twenty meters away or the distant mechanical hum of the extraction turbines.
Nothing.
Liam slowly turned.
The maintenance room was gone.
That was considerably worse.
A corridor stretched ahead of him, formed almost entirely from golden ether.
