The golden light went away, and Greg felt the ground under his feet. When he fell through the portal, his stomach lurched, and for a moment everything spun out of control.

He closed his eyes tightly and waited for the nausea to go away while still holding Lylia and Elwen's hands firmly. "Urgh... what is this feeling...?"

"Is everyone okay?" he managed to ask, even though his voice sounded far away to him.

"Can you define 'okay' in this kind of situation...?" Lylia said, her grip on his hand getting stronger. "Because I feel like I just got thrown through a waterfall of lightning."

"That's... pretty close to the truth," Elwen said weakly. Greg could hear her breathing slowly and carefully, as if she were trying not to throw up. "Where are we anyway?"

Greg opened his eyes and right away wished he hadn't. They were standing on a stone island that looked like it was floating and was about thirty feet across.

The surface was smooth and dark, almost black, with silver veins running through it that pulsed with a faint light, but that wasn't the scary part. Everything else was the scary part. More accurately, it was the absence of everything else that was unsettling.

There was nothing beyond the edge of their small island. Not quite darkness, but something so empty that Greg's eyes couldn't focus on it.

It was like looking into a void that was outside of normal space, a place where distance and direction didn't make sense. The air felt wrong, like it was too still and too heavy at the same time.

"What the hell is this place?!" Greg asked, letting go of the hands he had been holding.

His legs were shaking, and he had to work hard to stay balanced. He was losing his sense of balance because there were no visual cues.

Hilda dropped to her knees as soon as they got there, and her breathing was heavy. The silver marks on her skin were glowing more brightly than before, making her face look strange.

"I can't breathe normally right now..." she said while letting out a lot of hard breathing. "The air here is totally bad, like I've been poisoned..."

Elwen knelt next to her and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Take short breaths."

"Don't try to fight it... just let your body get used to it..."

Lylia stood still, looking at the dark stone under her feet. The smooth texture and the silver veins pulsing with that rhythmic light made her remember something.

She had seen this before. But where?

She looked up at the empty space beyond their island, and a chill ran down her spine that had nothing to do with the strange, heavy air. The emptiness felt familiar in a way that made her stomach turn. Not the comfortable familiarity of home, but the unsettling memory of a place she'd tried to forget.

"This doesn't make sense," she said quietly as she stepped closer to the edge.

The sound of her boots scraping against the stone was too sharp and clear, like they acted differently here. This made her suspicion grow.

How the void seemed to eat up light. The heavy silence. The feeling that things she couldn't quite see were watching her.

"No... It can't be."

But more pieces of the puzzle fell into place as she thought about it. She thought the island was about thirty feet wide, which is the same size as the training platforms.

"The stone's black color is very close to obsidian but not quite... And that air, gods, that thick, heavy air that made every breath feel like work..."

Years ago, she had stood on a platform like this one, her hands shaking as Rosalina told her what this place was. She was scared then too, seeing shapes move in the dark and hearing sounds that shouldn't be there.

"Lylia?" Greg's voice pulled her out of her thoughts. "Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."

She hadn't seen a ghost. She had experienced something even more terrifying: a memory she had buried deep down from a time when she still believed she could become a Royal Knight, and Rosalina had taken her to unimaginable places and shown her extraordinary things.

A shape floated by their island, and she held her breath. A sword that moved on its own, its blade shining with purpose and awareness. And just like that, everything came rushing back.

Greg looked around more carefully for any sign of Hammy or an exit. That's when he saw them.

Shapes moving in the empty space outside their island. At first, he thought his eyes were just playing tricks on him, but they weren't.

There were definitely things out there, floating around in the void like ships on a dark ocean. He could see more details as his vision got better.

Weapons. And there are a lot of them. Greg possibly loses count of the weapons, which could number in the thousands or even more.

But these weren't just regular weapons that had been left behind in an old armory. These weapons were on the move, like going for a walk, floating, and even alive, like they're some kind of exotic creature.

A sword floated by their island, and the blade shone with an inner light. There was no one holding it, no hand on its hilt, but it moved with purpose and awareness. The crossguard bent and flexed like shoulders, and the pommel turned like a head looking for something.

Greg could see a huge warhammer walking back and forth on another floating island farther away. It had a handle that bent in the middle like a knee joint, and it walked with a slow, heavy gait that made him think of a soldier on patrol.

Greg said, "What the actual fuck is this place... like seriously, are you girls seeing what I'm seeing...?"

Elwen nodded while looking at all the weapons. "Y-Yeah... it gives me goosebumps, and now it makes me hate weapons even more than before seeing them can do something as crazy as that...!"

Lylia's hands were shaking. She knew how Warhammer walked because she'd seen it patrol the same path for hours while she was training, with Rosalina explaining how each weapon had its own personality and patterns. She remembered being both fascinated and scared at the same time.

"No, no, no..." She couldn't stop herself from repeating those words. "We shouldn't be here. We can't be here."

She thought about all the warnings Rosalina had given her. The weapons that weren't stable. The ones who attacked first and never asked questions.

The part of the Armory that they weren't allowed to go to because even Rosalina couldn't promise their safety there. And now they were here, hurt, exhausted, and with no clear way out.

"A pocket dimension," Lylia said suddenly, her voice tight with recognition. "I know this place!"

"I've been here before!"

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