It started subtle.
A faint ripple of energy spreading outward from where he sat, silent and almost imperceptible, like a stone dropped into still water. It moved through the walls of the storage room, past the manor, and out into the sleeping city of Lirath, further still, bleeding across the barony, then beyond, stretching out across the kingdom in a wave so thin and quiet that no ordinary being would have felt a thing.
Almost imperceptible, but enough to set off a chain reaction Evan never could have imagined, not even in his wildest thoughts.
His eyes snapped open.
The space in front of him had begun to ripple, slowly at first, then faster, reality itself seeming to twist and fold in on itself again and again until what remained was something that looked like a slowly rotating void. A tear in the air. Black and silent and wrong in a way that had nothing to do with sight.
The moment it formed, the temperature in the room plummeted.
