Inside the square cavity of Noll Vey’s basalt chest, the mortar was already growing cool.
Four nights ago, when he and Ossa Flint and Tessa Dene had raised this stone host frame on the workshop bench while the nine-day maturity clock ticked down from one hundred and sixty-two hours to one hundred and fifty, Noll had parted a secondary facet from his main blue core—Core Chip #2—and seated it behind the carved breastbone in a cradle of braided copper wire and slaked lime. For ninety-six hours, that thumb-sized splinter of sapphire stone had been his heart, his lungs, and his tongue down on the floor. It had let him walk the ramparts beside Tessa in the rain, take the witness stand against Varn’s memory, catch the falling masonry beam over little Sen’s head at the cost of his left arm, and step in front of Orin Vane to keep the host peace when the ninth door opened.
Now, with the Outer Threshold Grace Window sealed at 0:00 and the last echo of Vane’s voice dead against the vault, Noll hooked his thick basalt forefinger and thumb around the copper cradle inside his ribs.
When he pulled, it did not hurt the way Varn’s iron club had hurt behind the coaching stable, or the way the red collar had burned when Vane pulled the chain. It felt like taking off a heavy winter coat in an unheated room—a sudden, bone-deep rush of draft across his thoughts as the connection between his…
