Variance energy.
The words settled in William's mind with an unpleasant weight. He had fought beside Rah long enough to understand exactly what that energy did to mana. It never overpowered a spell. It simply refused to let it keep its shape, unpicking the structure thread by thread until there was nothing left to hold together. If something in the depths of this base behaved the same way, then his Spatial Lock was no longer the absolute cage he had built it to be. It was a net with holes in it, and he had no idea how large those holes were.
The thought led him somewhere colder.
