Then the smell. Copper and brine. Something organic and wrong. The air is thick, humid, and cold all at once, pressing against your skin like a damp shroud.

You're lying on a hard, fleshy surface. It pulses beneath you.

The ceiling above is a mass of writhing tendrils, slick with mucus, catching the faint bioluminescent glow of strange, bulbous pods. Everywhere you look, the world seems to breathe. You're inside something alive.

A tremor shakes the chamber. Something screams in the distance—high-pitched, inhuman, and cut short. Then a voice, sharp and guttural, cuts through the noise.

Behind her, through a cracked portal of shimmering glass, the sky beyond is a chaos of burning ships and falling debris. The nautiloid is falling.