The pressure change reached Juno’s instrument before Eli felt it in his teeth.
She called hold. Kellan had just taken the rear end of the altered sling through the offset, with the Aegis healer ahead of him and a scout checking the lower edge. The scout turned at Juno’s voice. Stone grated inside the wall.
Eli saw a vertical seam become a dark line. Then the intervening panel shifted across the passage, striking the corner where the long load had needed to turn. Kellan dropped the sling onto its prepared support and pushed the healer away from the moving edge. A cry came from the scout. Dust and a hanging strip of broken surface blocked the view.
“Count,” Sera said.
The people on Eli’s side answered by position. Tessa reached for the medical bag but stayed behind Kellan’s last marked boundary. Through the narrowed gap came his voice, strained but intelligible.
“Three here. Healer, scout, me. Leg injury. Don’t force this opening.”
The Aegis leader moved forward until Sera stopped him at the new crack. Juno watched the trace settle into a shape different from the reading taken at the rest place. No one had announced an active ability immediately before the surge. That fact went into the record without becoming proof that abilities played no part in any change.
