The slab split with a sound like shattering glass, a high, piercing wail that reverberated through the throne room. Light poured from the fracture, blinding and prismatic, spilling across the polished marble floor in jagged streaks of white and gold. In the span of a heartbeat, the world shifted. Valerian and Seraphine were no longer standing on solid ground but suspended in an infinite void, weightless and untethered. The air thrummed with an unnatural resonance, as though the universe itself were holding its breath.