The Emperor's demand still lingered in the air, heavy and commanding, when the world beneath him began to respond in a way that no one present could have ever imagined, not even in their worst fears or deepest nightmares.
At first, it was nothing more than a tremor.
A quiet, almost harmless vibration beneath the ruined ground, like the distant echo of something moving far below where no eye could reach and no hand could touch. The kind of movement that could easily be ignored in any other situation, dismissed as the natural settling of broken earth after a violent clash.
But this was not natural.
The tremor deepened.
It spread.
The cracks that already lined the battlefield began to widen, not with a violent burst, but with a slow and dreadful inevitability, as if something beneath the surface was stretching, waking, pressing outward with a will that refused to remain buried any longer.
Then the ground gave way.
Not in a single place.
Not in a single direction.
Everywhere.
