The gap is just wide enough if a person folds themselves small and does not think too hard about what they are entering. Inside, the world changes temperature. The hum fills every hollow in the protagonist's skull; the green glow is brighter here — not warm, exactly, but present in the way a fever is. The stem walls are threaded with pale filaments, dense as a lung's lining, and they pulse. Slowly. Without alarm. But they pulse. The sweetness is stronger here. It is not rot — or not only rot. It is the smell of something still growing, something that has found a foothold and is spreading by increments too slow to watch but too certain to stop. The earth at the protagonist's feet is dark and soft, and where it meets the filaments it has stopped being ordinary earth. Above, the guard's boot-steps cross the cobblestones. Behind the protagonist, the gap seals shut.