The sound began deep inside the mountain. A low, hollow groan that shook through the marrow of Lin Ke’s broken hand.
It wasn’t the hum of the array. It was the sound of three hundred tons of unsupported fiery dark rock shearing away from its bedrock anchor.
A hair-thin crack appeared at the threshold of Floor Eight.
In less than three seconds, the crack widened into a three-foot-wide jagged deep gap that tore across the chamber, swallowing the outer edge stone railings in a roar of tumbling rubble.
Behind Lin Ke, the arched stone stairwell that led down to Floor Seven buckled inward.
A massive slab of ceiling rock crashed down directly onto the spiral landing, sealing the stairwell beneath twenty tons of iron-hard granite rubble.
The path downward was fully blocked.
And Floor Eight was crumbling.
