Everyone in Meraval knew within the hour.
You would have had to be deaf and blind to miss it. The pressure alarms went off across all five rings at once and stayed on. The transport tunnels stopped. Every lock in the harbour shut together, and every crew in the port came up out of their holds to watch a piece of the city vanish behind two plates of steel.
Nobody in the castle knew the cause yet. What they understood was the scale of it. Breaching a dome that had held for centuries took resources, access and time.
Lyren and Ithanne crossed into the second ring at a pace neither of them would have called running, and stopped at the edge of what was left.
Beyond the eastern bulkhead the sector stood full to the vaulting. The emergency lamps still burned, and through the observation ports the water was flat and green with shapes hanging in it. Cargo. Doors. Whole sections of walkway floating where they had torn loose.
