After the drill bit pierced the mysterious outer layer, every sound of the mountain vanished.
The first sensation was an unnatural silence, dense and prolonged, so thick that those standing near the Mandala instinctively held their breath. The wind that forever howled through the crevices of the Himalayas was suddenly gone. In that instant, the air seemed seized, frozen in place, heavy enough that each inhale carried a piercing chill.
Then the spiritual energy appeared.
It didn't erupt violently. It seeped upward like a thin mist from the depths of the earth, slipping through the ancient grooves of the Mandala. The current had no fixed form; at times it was as delicate as smoke, at times dense as early-morning vapor. Sunlight passed through it, giving it a translucent silver glow tinged faintly with jade, like moonlight filtered through ancient glass drifting in open space.
Those standing closest felt the change at once. Their skin prickled. Fine hairs rose along their arms. Their hearts faltered for a beat, as though the body itself recognized something that didn't belong to the familiar world.
The professor stood motionless before the Mandala, his hand still resting upon the newly exposed stone. He could feel every carved line beneath his palm — deep, precise, not decorative but deliberate, like channels carefully engineered for flow.
The spiritual energy gathered within those grooves, moving with order, circulating around the Mandala's core in a strange rhythm, like a dormant circulatory system awakening after thousands of years.
Anika was the first to break the silence.
She bent down to check the drill's control panel, her hands trembling slightly, whether from cold or tension she couldn't tell. When the drill fully stopped, the gauge needle flickered erratically, then froze at a reading beyond any scale she'd ever seen.
A strand of spiritual energy, thin as dew, settled upon her wrist. It was cool. Almost pleasant.
Anika looked up, squinting at the shimmering current before her, and for a fleeting second a smile crossed her face — the smile of a scientist encountering a phenomenon beyond textbooks.
"Strange," she murmured, brushing it lightly away.
Within seconds, her expression shifted. Her pupils dilated. Her breathing slowed, as if straining to hear a distant sound. Her gaze lost its familiar focus.
The professor sensed the change just as the surrounding instruments reacted in unison.
Magnetic field monitors beeped relentlessly, needles spinning out of control. Seismic sensors displayed twisted waveforms that matched no geological model ever recorded. The drilling computer screen flickered, connection errors flashing across the interface. A reconnaissance drone hovering above the Mandala abruptly lost signal, faltered, and crashed against the rocky slope, its camera capturing one final frame of blinding white before shutting down entirely.
"This isn't right," Venkatesh said, rushing toward the main console. "This interference isn't a natural quake. It's like... the entire mountain is responding."
The spiritual energy continued to spread, thicker now, colder. The air carried the scent of metal mixed with damp stone, tinged with a faint sweetness that defied description.
A young student named Minh, standing at the edge of the Mandala, felt himself drawn forward without knowing why. He crouched and touched a crevice where the energy pooled.
The moment his fingertip made contact, Minh stiffened. He inhaled sharply and stood frozen.
"Minh?" someone called.
He didn't answer.
His eyes widened, reflecting the shimmering silver light. His lips moved, forming fragmented syllables without coherence, yet repeating in rhythmic patterns like an unknown language. No one understood what he was saying, but those nearby felt an invisible weight press against their chests, slowing their heartbeats.
Then the ground trembled.
At first it was only a subtle vibration, enough to dislodge small stones down the slope. But within seconds the tremor intensified rapidly, as if the Mandala itself were turning beneath the earth.
The ancient carvings glowed faintly. Spiritual energy surged faster, spiraling into miniature vortices. Seismic sensors exceeded safety thresholds, alarms shrieking.
"Everyone pull back!" the professor shouted. "Leave the drilling site immediately!"
They'd barely moved when a deep explosion thundered from within the mountain, like compressed pressure suddenly released. The ground split along the Mandala's grooves. Massive rocks broke loose, colliding with violent cracks. The upper slope began to slide, snow and stone cascading downward like a white torrent.
The wind roared.
From nowhere, a snowstorm formed with impossible speed. Snow didn't fall in straight descent. It twisted in spirals, forming rotating columns as though directed by some unseen will. Within seconds visibility collapsed. The temperature plummeted. Breath thickened into white vapor. Shouts were swallowed by wind and falling rock.
The professor was thrown to the ground as a violent tremor swept through. He tried to rise, but the earth beneath him continued to shift. Minh was dragged into the chaos, his small figure vanishing into the white storm and stone dust. Several members of the team were buried instantly beneath falling rock, without time to cry out.
Anika and a few others slid into a natural rock hollow along the slope, narrowly avoiding the main collapse. They huddled in darkness, listening as the mountain crumbled overhead, each shockwave reverberating through their bodies. One by one, their electronic devices shut down, batteries drained or circuits disrupted beyond function.
No one knew how long the disaster lasted. Time lost meaning within the blizzard.
Only when the tremors weakened and the wind eased did they dare crawl out.
The sight before them silenced all speech.
The Mandala was nearly buried beneath rock and snow. The drilling site had vanished. The mountainside itself had changed shape.
Only a handful of survivors remained, gathered in silence, eyes reddened from cold and grief.
No one said it aloud, yet all understood: what they'd awakened wasn't a creature, not a being with form, but an ancient seal intertwined with the mountain's structure and the spiritual current locked beneath it. When that seal was violated, the mountain and nature itself reacted to restore balance, destroying those who'd touched the forbidden boundary.
In the remnants of the storm, the spiritual energy still lingered. Thinner now. Fainter. But not gone.
It drifted quietly in the air, a silent reminder that the world had stepped into another phase.
None among the survivors could say what would happen next. They knew only that from this moment onward, the old laws had begun to fracture.
And in that same moment, while the physical world struggled to rescue the living, another voice rose within Duong Minh's mind under Lyra's urging:
"This is the only opportunity."