The barrier did not fail immediately.
It cried.
A thin vibration cut through the mountain—sharp, piercing, crawling straight into teeth and bone. Several disciples flinched at once, hands rising instinctively to their jaws as the sound skittered along nerves instead of air.
Light surged across the cliffs.
Not smoothly.
Not evenly.
Formation lines flared in broken rhythm—one blazing white-hot, the next dimming to a sickly glow, then flaring again as if struggling to stay alive. The mountain's skin flickered, illumination stuttering like a wounded heartbeat.
The stone itself remained whole.
The light did not.
Across the sky-spanning barrier, fine fractures appeared—lines of radiance splitting apart, branching and curving in erratic patterns. They spread like veins beneath skin, racing outward, intersecting, recoiling, then spreading again as unseen pressure hammered from above.
Each tremor rippled downward.
