Vane saw it for the first time at the attack's seventy-minute mark from the hill's third tier.
Not clearly. From the third tier the Academic District's lower section was visible at the distance that made detail difficult and scale apparent. And what was apparent from this distance was that something was moving through the lower district's eastern wing that the eastern wing was not surviving.
Not a collapse. A collapse was sudden, a single event. This was continuous.
The eastern wing was changing shape over time the way things changed shape when something was moving through them from the inside. The stone not falling so much as being relocated. The building's geometry revising itself in the direction of the thing's movement.
Vane's chest tightened as he watched.
He watched it for thirty seconds.
He ran the Usurper across the distance.
