On Earth, the sky cracked.
Not open—but visibly fractured by thin, luminous lines branching outward from the drifting Boundary Stars.
Silver Eyes tightened every thread she possessed.
"I am thinning," she admitted, her presence flickering at the edges of perception.
Entire cities experienced rolling tremors as tectonic plates responded to gravitational fluctuations. Communication satellites shorted briefly as electromagnetic waves warped unpredictably.
The Preservation Front declared immediate emergency authority.
The Ascendants doubled their prayers.
And deep beneath a remote desert facility, scientists detected something worse.
A micro-rift.
Small—barely measurable.
But real.
The Boundary was not just drifting.
It was weakening at specific stress points.
Silver Eyes sensed it instantly.
"Something is pushing from outside Earth's curvature," she whispered.
Not the Watchers.
Not the distant Hunger.
Something closer.
Something that had been dormant.
And it was reacting to the Axis being stretched thin.