The sound blast wave that had shattered the Judges’ armor had not stopped at the door.
It had driven downward, thirty feet into the ancient, honeycombed limestone strata that formed the foundation of the Vault of Founders. For four hundred years, the rock beneath the crypt had been hollowed out by underground water drainage and weakened by sulfur erosion, sustained only by the brittle magical tension of the Synod’s old family seals.
And Mira’s song had just crushed every seal in the room.
CRACK.
A hairline fissure, black as pitch and glowing with faint underground violet heat, sliced across the red granite floor, cutting directly between Ren’s boots and the central sarcophagus.
“MOVE!” Lord Ren roared, leaping from the stone barricade and lunging toward Mira.
Before the Emperor’s iron boots could touch the stone, the hairline fissure widened into a deep gap three feet wide. The sound was not a snap. It was the thunderous, underground roar of an entire mountain shelf shearing away from its bedrock anchors.
CRASH.
