The first thing you feel is the pressure.

It happens in a blink: one moment, you’re darting across the rain-slick rooftop, heart pounding with the electric rush of pursuit, the hum of the city below seeping into your bones; the next, his gloved hand — unnervingly cold, its grip like a vice — finds your wrist. You barely have time to register his eyes, like hollow wells rimmed with exhaustion and malice, before the world folds in on itself.

The colors drain away. The rooftop, the skyline, even the damp night air vanish in a convulsion of shadow. You stumble — no, you fall — into a place that doesn’t feel like gravity applies.

It’s not black. Not exactly. Black implies emptiness, but this has texture. The Darkforce Dimension is a living ocean of shadow-stuff, endless in every direction, its “sky” churning with slow, oil-slick ripples. Wanda told you about it. Stars hang in the distance, but they are wrong, not the clean pinpricks of silver you know, but smeared blotches of dim white, warped like bruised pearls. Each one like it’s about to burn out.

Daniels drifts toward you, his suit's trailing like liquid ink. Here, in this place, his face seems thinner, stretched, his skin absorbing light rather than reflecting it. His voice is almost gentle, and that makes it worse.

“No one lasts long here,” he says, as if he’s explaining some crazy scientific fact. “The Darkforce takes… It feeds… It always wins.”

You let your face go slack. Lower your eyes. Tilt your body just slightly, the universal posture of defeat. Your voice, when you use it, is small — intentionally so.

“So… you’ve already won.”

It’s almost funny, the way it hits him.

He blinks, uncertainty crossing his features. “That’s it? You’re not… fighting? Not screaming?” He circles you like a mix of a shark and offended child, his shadowy tendrils trailing across your skin. “You’re supposed to break here. This place…” He gestures to the warped expanse. “…it unravels people!"