The address Echo had left led to an utterly unremarkable old apartment building in central Vienna, its architecture somewhere between Art Nouveau and modern utilitarianism. The entrance was narrow, the lobby dim, and the air heavy with the mingled smells of cabbage and disinfectant. It could hardly have been more at odds with the fantastical name "Rift Corridor."
Following the instructions on the note, I avoided the creaking elevator and climbed the cluttered stairs to the top floor. At the end of the corridor stood a dark wooden door with peeling paint and no number.
There was no keyhole. No handle. Only a palm-sized disk of dark metal, its material unknown, embedded in the center of the door. It was covered in patterns similar to those on the iron gates of the Cemetery of the Nameless, but far more intricate and precise.
A key... another key.
This time, I knew what to do. Without hesitating, I pressed my palm against the cold metal disk-not at random, but slowly channeling into it the unique aura within me, the part "tainted" by the notebook's power and fused with the rules of the Chapter of Binding.
Humm...
An extremely faint resonance sounded, as though from another dimension. The patterns on the metal disk lit up one by one, glowing a ghostly blue. The light flowed along them, finally gathering at the center of the disk into a tiny, endlessly spinning vortex with no visible bottom.
Then the wooden door before me began to ripple transparently, like water disturbed by a stone. Its solidity rapidly faded. The wood blurred, turned transparent, and finally became an unstable curtain of light shimmering like water.
Beyond the curtain was not the room I had expected, but a warped space that defied any ordinary description.
*Was this... the