The prison's rhythm broke.
It was not a violent rupture at first, not an explosion or a scream, but a hesitation so subtle that anyone without Lindarion's heightened awareness would have missed it entirely. One pulse stretched a fraction too long, the dull light in the prison's veins stuttering as if the structure itself had forgotten the next beat. The air over the basin tightened, pressure snapping into place like a held breath.
Nysha felt it a heartbeat later. "That wasn't structural drift," she said, already rising into a crouch. "That was deliberate."
Before Lindarion could answer, the stabilizer's inner arcs shifted. Stone and crystal rotated against one another with a sound like continents grinding together, and a narrow aperture opened along the prison's lower ring. No alarms flared. No seals shattered. This was not a breach born of force, but of allowance.
From within the aperture, something moved.
