I look at the widening seam. The opening is not yet large enough for me. It is barely enough for stale air and blue light. It is not a passage. It is not safe. The anchor sits embedded beside it, still pulsing. The cut grooves carry that pulse west and upward.
The passage shifts again. This time, the shelf beneath my left foot drops half a hand. Sera sees it before I feel the full failure.
“Kavor, right!”
I move right. The stone where I stood cracks open and drops into darkness. Dust roars up. Sera’s hand catches my forearm. Not to save me from falling. She could not hold my weight if the floor went. But she pulls me toward the safe shelf, and I go because she saw what I did not see. Because we both are needed.
I dig my claws into the right shelf to catch my balance. Sera stumbles back, breath hissing, arm jerking against her bandage. Red blooms through the wrap, and the sight cuts through me.
No. Not now.
The red bijass tries to rise. I shove it down with everything I am.
The anchor pulses again. Once. Pause. Again.
The cracked floor answers, but not in front of us. Behind.
“The passage we came through,” Sera says.
The way back splits along the old channels, seams glowing white-gray as if the off-world signal has found every hidden vein. The route behind us buckles, then sags in sections.
It is not collapsing yet, but it is closing. The sealed district is opening, and the way back is dying.
Sera breathes once, hard. “So away is not an option.”
I look at the seam. Blue light spills through stronger.
“Toward is not an option either.”
“That leaves sideways.”
“There is no sideways.”
“There’s always sideways. It’s just usually ugly.”
She turns and scans. Her gaze moves over wall, floor, cut lines, anchor, cracked shelf, falling dust, my feet, her own, the dead channel behind us. She is pale. In pain. Bleeding again. And brilliant.
Her eyes fix on the left wall above the anchor. “There.”
I see nothing useful. Only a line of old cut stone where natural pressure has warped the blocks inward.
“No.”
“You don’t know what I’m looking at.”
“I know I dislike it.”
“It’s a relief seam.”
“A what?”
“A pressure break. City builders use them in bad corridors. If the floor shifts, the seam opens before the roof comes down. It vents a collapse sideways.”
“This is not City work.”
“No, but stone under pressure is stone under pressure. Old Tajss apparently also disliked being crushed.”
The zemlja pressure rolls below us again, closer now. The anchor answers. The seam behind it opens another finger-width. The blue glow beyond brightens enough to paint Sera’s face.
