The pull did not fade.
It sharpened.
Rue Yim stood at the edge of the chamber's center, breath uneven, vision threading in and out of clarity as the lattice tightened around that singular point. It was no longer just a structural failure.
It was a focus.
A question being asked.
"She's forcing a condition," Rue Yim said.
Ye Jing-e didn't take his eyes off the distortion. "Then we break it before it completes."
"No."
The answer came instantly.
Too fast.
Too certain.
He glanced at her. "You just said—"
"If we break it, we give her data," Rue Yim said.
The threads pulsed again, the convergence point compressing further, light bending unnaturally inward as if reality itself was being folded along a single axis.
"She wants this to resolve," Rue Yim continued. "One way or another."
"And if we don't act?" Ye Jing-e pressed.
Rue Yim swallowed.
"Then it resolves without us."
Silence.
Neither option was good.
The chamber dimmed further.
The pull intensified.
