The crystal shattered with a sound that did not merely echo through the sanctuary, but seemed to reverberate directly through their bones, through their mana, through the very ancient foundations buried beneath the ruins themselves.
For one terrible instant afterward, everything became unnaturally still, as though the entire world had paused in anticipation of something ancient awakening from a sleep that should never have been broken.
Then the corrupted mana exploded.
An enormous pillar of black energy erupted upward from beneath the sanctuary floor with catastrophic force, swallowing the chamber in darkness as ancient stone walls cracked violently under the pressure. Pillars that had endured for centuries collapsed like fragile twigs while the floor beneath their feet split apart in jagged fractures, massive sections of the sanctuary crumbling into the abyss now opening below them.
The air became suffocating.
