The drain rose half an inch before the street broke.
Eli saw the iron lip lift against its bed of stone. Dirty water spilled beneath it, running uphill toward the dark seam opening between the paving blocks. Beyond the boundary, people stopped to watch. They had carried their goods out, obeyed the bell, and reached the place they had been told was safer. Now curiosity turned their faces back toward the danger.
“Keep moving past the cart,” Kellan called. “The cart isn’t the end of the route.”
A woman caught her child’s chin and turned it toward her. A man began backing away while still watching the drain. Tessa’s medics took the people who needed help through a doorway rather than let them gather across the road. The local responders stretched their perimeter from fixed points they could defend, leaving the evacuation lane open behind them.
The hunter who had received the warning stood at the nearer end. His hands shook when he fastened his guard, but he kept looking at the instruction and then the actual street, refusing to let one replace the other.
Sera came back from the far side with the second scout.
“The distortion’s spreading along the marked block,” she told the responder. “No opening behind the west boundary yet.”
