The crack above the table had been two inches wide. Now it was four, and it had not stopped there. Beorn no longer expected it to stop on its own.
The lamp was out. The oil still sat in the reservoir, but whatever interaction had happened at the midpoint had taken what the flame needed. The only light in the room came through the crack.
It was an erratic glow. It struck the room at a slant that matched nothing, and the shadows it made disagreed with one another in ways that made the space hard to read.
The fractures in the left wall had multiplied. The six-inch hairline crack had split into secondary breaks along the mortar lines, uneven and jagged, following the weakest paths through the stone.
Aestrith's feet were planted hard on the stone floor. Her breathing was marked, and the pallor of constant high output was evident.
