The fold reached the chamber.
Owen felt it first through the listening exercise. The iolite veins around them had been holding steady for hours, their faint resonance murmuring in the back of his perception. Then the resonance shifted. Not gradually. All at once. The veins stopped acting like iolite and started acting like something else — something that had been told it was iolite by an authority that did not need its consent.
He opened his eyes.
"It's here."
Yalira was already drawing her daggers. Jorik came up off the floor of the chamber in a single low, practiced motion. Vren rose silent beside him, blade out.
The walls began to bend.
