---
The change was immediate. The air smelled different. Not damp rot. Not stale stone. It smelled like grass warmed by the sun.
In front of them stretched a vast grassland, green and wide, rippling under wind like an ocean.
Sekhmet stopped walking without realizing it.
Lily stopped beside him.
Bat Bat flew up and hovered, eyes wide.
"Big," it whispered.
Far ahead, beyond the grassland, something dark and massive cut across the horizon.
Walls.
Real walls.
Not jagged cliffs.
Not natural stone.
Walls built by hands and power.
Huge, towering, layered with defensive runes that shimmered faintly even from this distance, like heat haze.
And at the center of that distant wall, a gate.
A true gate.
A mouth of civilization.
Even from far away, Sekhmet could see movement — tiny dots like ants, flowing toward the gate in lines.
As they walked closer, the dots became people.
Hundreds.
Then thousands.
A long queue snaking across the grassland, waiting to enter.
