As the heaviest upper segment of the shattered pale blade ring toppled off the split bronze drum in the center of the court, its dying capacitive charge didn’t fade evenly into the snow. Instead, because the southern and eastern ground trenches had been cut and the lower returning hub lay split in two, the last stored wave of the collapsing ring funneled sideways down the only leftover stone trough on the ridge: the narrow northern service passage behind the western cliff spur. There, the iron channel rails led toward the seal chamber.
A jagged, five-foot crescent of flickering grey-white pressure—half condensing metal, half unguided discharge—tore into the mouth of the service passage at head height, whistling straight toward the doorway where Nara Soth leaned with her scarred back and where Seyun and Ilyra sat ten feet below on the western shelf.
Hall Mistress Soran didn’t need working ears to know the wave was coming. Through the soles of her boots on the granite flat stone slab and the grey flash against the wet rock walls, the veteran founder of White Heron Hall read the exact height, speed, and angle of the dying crescent before it had traveled six feet into the passage.
