The pressure did not crest... it instead raped the world.
When the breaking point arrived, the dome did not shatter with any clean, merciful finality. It rotted—slow, intimate, obscene—peeling away layer by layer like infected skin being flayed from still-living meat—slow at first, almost reluctant, as though the structure itself possessed a will that refused to yield even as it was being devoured.
The dome trembled.
Its flawless blue surface, once radiant and absolute, flickered in uneven pulses as the layered energies sustaining it struggled to maintain cohesion beneath the relentless assault. Each ripple that passed through it carried strain, each pulse weaker than the last, its once-perfect geometry beginning to warp under a pressure that had never been meant to exist within the same reality.
The Unfinished Children did not relent.
They had become something else... the Unfinished Children had indeed transcended mere hunger.
They had become worse.
