One moment Noll Vey felt Tessa Dene’s left boot press down on the third limestone step below the scullery door—eight pounds of dry wool, leather, and four-pound iron hinge—and the next moment the stairwell below the third riser simply ceased to belong to him.
It was not like the threshold boundary at the outer gate, where his stone sight stopped cleanly at a line of open air. It felt as though someone had taken a pair of tailor’s shears, snipped a triangular patch out of his own coat while he was wearing it, and stitched the raw edges together into a tight little knot that his fingers could not pry apart.
He could feel the first step. He could feel the second step. He could feel the top face of the third step, where a pinch of spilled barley meal sat beside a damp mortar crack.
And half an inch below that mortar crack, the fourth step connected directly back to the ceiling of the third step in a closed, blind blister of stone that turned every probe of his core sense back upon itself like a mirror facing a mirror.
SLEEPING DEBT D-07A ACTIVE — POCKET LOOP SEALED BEYOND CORE REACH
