The second boundary screamed.
Not in sound, but in pressure an invisible force ripping outward, dragging air, magic, and meaning toward its collapsing center. The silver ring warped violently, its light folding in on itself like a dying star.
“Elara!” Draven shouted, tightening his arms around her as the ground lurched beneath them. “That seal is destabilizing!”
She felt it too. Not as pain this time, but as absence. The secondary boundary had no anchor, no living will to define its edges. It was pure intention without form and intention could not hold reality together for long.
The First Hunger did not advance.
It watched.
Its earlier panic had settled into something colder, sharper. Calculation.
“You have done something unprecedented,” it said, voice low. “A self-renewing converge
