The giant face of the preaching old man filled the space beyond the gate, grotesquely stretched as if the world itself had been forced to bend around his features. His skin looked cracked and dry, pulled too tight over bone, and his eyes rolled wildly before fixing onto Kaeya with chilling precision.
Then his mouth opened.
"THE MORTAL DISASTER IS COMING."
What followed could not be called a voice.
It was pressure.
The air itself seemed to rupture, collapsing outward in a violent surge. Kaeya barely had time to register the sound before her body was torn from the ground. The shockwave slammed into her chest like a solid wall, crushing the breath from her lungs and snapping her senses apart.
The stone beneath her feet exploded. Cracks raced across the street as she was hurled backward, her body spinning helplessly through the air, weightless and out of control. Pain bloomed everywhere at once, sharp in her ribs, searing along her spine, numbing in her limbs.
