The sect did not notice it at first.
That was the problem.
When something dangerous arrived loudly, with fire, with screaming, with the kind of destruction that left no room for doubt, people prepared for it. They gathered, analyzed, reacted. Fear was useful when it had something solid to grip onto.
But this did not arrive loudly.
It slipped in quietly. Almost politely. Like a guest who knew exactly which door to use.
...
Lan Yue was the first to feel that something was wrong.
Not because she was the strongest. Not because she was the most experienced. There were elders within these walls who had cultivated for three times her age, who could flatten mountains with a breath and had seen wars she'd only read about.
But she had lived through one world ending already, and there was a certain… *texture* to instability that did not change between worlds. A specific quality to the air when something that should be solid began to quietly come apart at the seams.
