beginning of the end

Weeks pass, and denial of the situation becomes impossible. The tremors no longer arrive as interruptions but as a rhythm; a low, constant reminder felt through the soles of the feet and the backs of the teeth. Stormbreak shudders now several times a day, sometimes several times an hour, the pauses between them growing shorter, the stillness between waves of motion never quite settling. What once felt like a strange anomaly has become a condition of living, an instability woven into every step. The first pieces to fall are small. Chips of stone shear loose from the city’s outer edges, skittering away into open air before vanishing into the vastness below. At first they are easy to miss until someone watches a portion of the outter containing wall crumble in slow, impossible silence, its fragments breaking apart as they tumble five kilometres down to the waiting sea. There is no impact sound. Just absence. Just the knowledge that something is gone and will never be recovered. Then come the cracks. They score through the Pacificist Plaza and Silk Houses like scars drawn by an unsteady hand, splitting decorative stonework and creeping up walls that were never meant to bear stress. Some are thin enough to step over, thin enough to pretend they are nothing more than surface damage, while others gape wide enough to swallow dropped objects whole. Bridges groan as the fractures widen, and homes develop subtle leans that worsen by degrees rather than moments, slow enough to be horrifying in their inevitability. Stormbreak will fall at the end of the month. Any remaining threads you want to have will need be started before then to take place in the city, and if at all possible, also finished (because boards will be archived/updated based on the fall and I don't want the updates unnecessarily dragged out!)