The trace was going to persist right through the main projection until night set in, delicate but resolute, indicating a vacant area on all of the regular scans. It didn't seem particularly difficult to follow up on that lead, so it was surprising the sealed universe would remind the three explorers of the growing lack of clean steps to walk through.
The pressure spike hit in the late hours. It wasn't the metronome ticking, since it had remained steady as ever, but something else and much heavier that had pressed up against the outer defensive lattices of three major realms at the exact same time. Their vampire, dragon, and the reinforced edges of new Earth all had a similar weight pressing on them without breaking through or even attempting to. They simply hovered with enough force to send out a wave of warnings to every monitoring station.
