"Second Wave: Pressure."
The moment the words settled into the atmosphere, Damien felt it.
It did not come in a rush. It was not sudden.
It unfolded with a deliberate slowness, like the turning of a celestial gear, vast and uncaring.
Pressure descended from every direction, not simply from above, but from beneath, from all over around him.
The very idea of space tightened, folding inward, as though reality had begun to condense into a single, suffocating point.
His knees buckled almost immediately, and he slammed into the ground with a force that fractured the stone beneath him.
His fingers clawed against the cracked earth, trying to brace himself as his back arched under the invisible weight pressing down on him. His jaw locked tight, and his breathing faltered. Every inhale became a struggle. Every exhale came as a wheeze.
This was not physical weight. It was not the mass of rock or metal or gravity as he understood it.
