The tremor did not fade.
It deepened. Each pulse of the earth was slower now, heavier, as if the Fork itself had become a heart straining to keep pace with some ancient rhythm.
Dust sifted from the cavern roof in dull cascades, vanishing before it hit the ground as though the air itself rejected their presence. Shadows snapped and bled across the walls, stretching too far and then recoiling like beasts under a whip.
Kaito's grip on his scythe tightened until his knuckles cracked.
The Abyssal Root was no longer dormant. It was dragging itself awake, and its awakening was not like the shifting of some buried creature. This was the world convulsing, reality convulsing, as if something buried at the marrow of creation was breaking its restraints.
"Too late," Nyra whispered. Her voice trembled, not with fear, but with recognition—as if she had known this moment would come from the instant they set foot here. "It heard us."
