"Do you ever wonder," she mused, her words curling around invisible candles, "what it feels like to hold the universe just below your ribs?"

The echo was a puzzle box, twisting through locked doors and untold corridors, folding eerily into itself.

"You see these walls, don't you?" he said, stepping through a slant of unyielding sunlight. "They whisper secrets only the key can unlock."

The key—an abstraction more than a tool—danced between them, unseen, yet undeniably present in its ethereal pull.

Venture further into the curious recesses of this hall, or gaze upward where the floor might wish to unfurl a sky.