The quiet did not last.
It thinned.
Like mist under a rising sun—still there, still present, but no longer able to hide what lay beneath it.
Rue Yim felt it first.
Not in the air.
Not in the ground.
In the threads.
They were holding.
But not evenly.
"What is it?" Wang Si asked.
He had stepped closer again, not quite beside her, not quite behind—always maintaining that precise distance he seemed to understand instinctively.
Close enough to act.
Far enough not to assume.
"It's not stable," Rue Yim said.
Ye Jing-e exhaled sharply. "You just stabilized it."
"I changed the structure," she corrected.
"That's not the same as stabilizing it."
The chamber responded.
A faint tremor.
Then another.
Subtle.
But growing.
The threads along the far side of the core flickered.
Not dimming.
Splitting.
"...That's new," Wang Si muttered.
It was.
And it was wrong.
Rue Yim stepped forward again.
Careful.
Measured.
"This is where it breaks," she said quietly.
