Spaces

When Halls grows too much

When the darkness of the Hall takes away something from someone, it grows a little. But is there a limit to this growth? Will the neighboring Halls slow down or stop its growth? Turns out, they don't. But instead, something weirder happens.
Once the Hall reaches 10 kilometers in length or width, its walls stay in the same place while the space beyond them starts to stretch out indefinitely. To escape them, one needs to find the center of the old Hall once again and any gateways that are still there, but visible only from the "inside of the walls".

Natural light

When a Hall becomes a Space, a lot of darkness disappears from its interior, replaced by lights. Sometimes there is one light, replicating the Sun, sometimes there are many, like will-o'-the-wisps or stars, and sometimes, the whole sky is filled with light.

Names of the Spaces

Normal Halls follow the name structure consisting of 4 words that describe their properties. The first one is the light level needed to counteract the hunger of the darkness. The second one describes the size and also the shape of the Hall using one of the few picked common names. The third is "of" and the fourth describes what the darkness of the Hall takes away.
But once the Hall reaches the size of Space, the first two words are no longer needed. Since the Spaces tend to be pretty unique, most of them are called after their landscapes and what they are made out of. And so, one could, for example, encounter Singing Treetops, Cliffs of Insanity, the Reflected Maze, etc.

Geography

Each Space has its own unique but repeating landscape. The two of them will never be the same but when entering space where land consists of mountains, one will only find mountains, no matter how far they'll go. Said landscapes can be pretty mundane and similar to the ones on Earth or completely abstract. But even the "mundane" terrains often have weird parts resulting from what the darkness of the Hall consumed. For example, Peaks of Words could look like mountains from afar, but once approached, one would discover they are completely made out of books, pages, or inksticks.
But not only the topology of the Spaces is unique. Each one has its natural laws, weathers, possible cycles, and most importantly, its own rules with many unpleasant consequences manifesting when not following them. What if not walking in a specific way results in gravity turning upside down for someone or moving too quickly breaks their legs? Just because of that, the writings on the gates to Spaces tend to turn into walls of text.

Fauna and flora

Both the creatures of the darkness and even The Inhabitants tend to stay away from the Spaces. The only exception is when they chase something there or there is no other way to move to another Hall.
Instead, Spaces gain their own fauna and flora. Just like the landscape, they tend to be unique to them. There are some hypotheses about the origin of those beings, most of them suggesting they were made out of the darkness of the Hall. One of the main reasons for this is that both the fauna and flora of the Spaces, while evolved to consume other things, still tend to be most attracted to the things the darkness of the Hall consumed. The popular counterargument for this hypothesis is that they most probably were made out of said consumed things. But until some further research is done, the truth remains a mystery.

Alternative Name(s)

Realms, Worlds

Type

Region

Location under

Dark Halls

Things lost forever

Once the Hall turns into a Space, anything the darkness took away from people and used to grow cannot be retrieved anymore, forever fused with the landscape. It is pretty common to see that when a Hall experiences one of the last "growth spurts", people who lost something there will flock there in a last desperate attempt to regain what was taken from them. This often backfires as those not careful enough might feed the darkness even more.

Archivists

Compared to all the other Halls, there have never been any sightings of Archivists inside of the Spaces. Even if the Hall had a pretty well-known Archivist inside who interacted with the people a lot, once it turns into a Space, they disappear without a trace.

Living in the Space

Depending on the Space, its fauna and flora, its geography, and its rules, living inside of one could be pretty easy or on the other hand, just trying to survive a few seconds there could turn into hell. Still, as one could expect, the safer ones tend to amass quite a lot of new permanent residents. Just like with other safe settlements, an outside observer can notice that leaving such an area turns harder and harder for those who do decide to stay there. Many of them will completely abandon their wish to return home as if even in safety, the Dark Halls took away something from them.