Salem hit the ground harder than he expected. His knees buckled, palms stung, and for a split second, he wasn’t sure if he’d landed on a floor or a concept of one. Everything around him pulsed with a faint, eerie glow, as if the air itself had been roughly sketched in with a trembling hand. He staggered upright, dusting off—dust? Ash? Glitched fragments of words?—from his shirt. > “Okay,” he muttered under his breath, “where the hell am I this time?” No reply. Only the hum of something vast and alive beneath his feet. The room was… wrong. Ceiling too high, walls tapering inward in ways that made his head hurt. Dozens—maybe hundreds—of doors floated in midair, each hanging off nothing, some open, some closed. And in the center of it all stood a colossal blackboard covered in frantic,

