Barnaby Holt did not let Kaelen pull the quilted blanket over his ears.
The old alchemist’s wooden ladle smacked against the braided hemp rope of the hammock, sending a sharp shudder through the frame.
“Get your head out of that pillow, boy,” Barnaby barked, his face glowing bright red under the weird light. “The sky is splitting into two different colors, and you’re talking about an afternoon nap.”
Kaelen sighed. He pushed his straw hat up with one finger and squinted toward the heavens.
The sky above Moon Six looked like an open furnace battling a glacier.
To the east, Sovereign Vael’s solar domain burned in deep, oily crimson, raining waves of heat against the upper atmosphere. To the west, Sovereign Nyx’s lunar frost spread across the void like pale blue venom, freezing the clouds into jagged sheets of glass.
Between the two gods, six massive iron cables stretched across space.
The celestial winches on the Hall of Edicts groaned every thirty seconds. Each metallic shudder advanced the cables a small fraction of a mile; together the pulses dragged Moon Six and its five sister satellites four miles per hour toward the central fire.
