Nothing happened for one full second.
Then the shrine forgot how to be a room.
It didn't crumble the way stone crumbles, with dust and sound and the satisfying violence of things breaking apart. It simply stopped agreeing to be solid. The far wall, the one hung with crimson veils layered fifty deep, folded inward on itself like paper closing along a crease no one had drawn, and where it had been there was only a seam of white, not light or emptiness exactly, just an absence that hurt to look at directly.
"What—" Zhou Ke's voice cracked in half. "What is that—"
"Don't look at it," Lin Yue said, without turning his head. "Look at the floor. The floor's still lying to us. That's more useful."
