“Shut up,” Atticus snaps, but his voice lacks the clean certainty it carried minutes ago, because the ground beneath us pulses again and this time it feels deliberate rather than random, like a heartbeat searching for alignment instead of shattering out of control.
The dungeon walls vibrate in a low rolling wave, and the mind link floods with overlapping reports that no longer sound panicked but unsettled, as if the pack is realizing that something larger than an attack is unfolding around them.
“Borders are stabilizing and destabilizing in patterns,” a warrior reports, breath tight but controlled, “it is not chaos, it is cycling.”
Cycling.
The word lands heavy in my chest because I can feel the rhythm now, and the moment I stop resisting the sensation and instead focus on it, the puls
