The barrier broke at dawn on the fifth day.
Castellaine felt it happen through every fiber of her altered being ...a shudder that passed through the fabric of reality itself, like the moment when a bone breaks and the body registers the catastrophe before the pain arrives. The Gate of Thessara, blazing with the combined output of seven Keystones driving the dimensional conversion to its terminal phase, emitted a sound that was not a sound but a vibration in the substrate of existence, a frequency so low that it bypassed hearing entirely and communicated directly with the nervous systems of every living thing within fifty miles.
Every bird in the surrounding mountains took flight simultaneously. Every animal within the radius bolted in whichever direction carried it away from the valley fastest. Insects dropped from the air, their tiny systems overwhelmed. Even the trees seemed to recoil, their branches pulling inward as if bracing against a wind that blew from the wrong direction.
