The floor of the sub-basement broke open before Soren could get off his knee.
It wasn't a Fracture.
He knew the feel of a Fracture and this was smaller, local, a rip the size of a doorway tearing through stone and dirt where the dying channel had left a burn the world could find.
Whatever the Author had loaded into that last line had used the burn as an address.
Grimm was already between him and the gap, hackles up, her shut eyes fixed on the broken ground.
She'd come down as the wolf and the wolf was what stood over him now.
Soren couldn't fight.
His hand was a ruined thing, the severance had taken a fistful of him, and he had maybe enough left to stand.
So he didn't try to fight.
He reached up through the three frequencies on the stairs and the one already snarling beside him, and he pulled.
They were already coming. He felt Maren and Selah on the steps before he finished the thought, Dani's moth a beat behind them.
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