The tremors change in rhythm and in intention, because they no longer feel like the steady pulse of awakening that accompanied the breaking of the seal, but instead roll beneath the soil in long deliberate waves that suggest something vast has shifted its weight in darkness and is no longer content to remain buried.
I feel it before anyone else does, because the hum beneath my ribs tightens sharply and Layla stills within me in a way that is not fear but recognition, and when the ground finally groans beneath the southern ridge it carries a resonance that does not align with the red bloodline or the rising fragment hovering in the deeper chamber.
“This is not us,” Layla says quietly inside my mind, and her voice is steady but alert.
“No,” I answer, because the land beneath my boots does
