Desk Six was shrouded in a mantle of dark, glass-fused stingray leather that had shrunk against its wooden ribs until the hide was taut as a drumhead. Across its surface, tiny emerald-colored crystals had sprouted like frost along the seams, glittering with a cold, greasy soft glow under the amber beam of Qiao Ming’s horn lantern. When he placed his bare fingertips upon the leather, the crystal growths did not crumble. They were hard as corundum, stinging his calloused flesh with a sharp, bitter-salt prickle.
“Do not inhale the dust if the crystals shear,” Qiao Ming warned quietly, his voice low and raspy in the dry cold air. “Stone-glass bloom from the sixth descent. In the outer halls of Entry hall 462, we found three survey markers coated in matching green rime. The rock beneath them had softened into soapstone while the stone skin turned to glass.”
Yan Zhiqiu drew back half a step, adjusting the brass clips of her glasses. She took a linen cloth from her satchel, soaking it with three drops of distilled pine resin before tying it across her lower face. Her dark eyes remained steady, observing every motion of his hands as he drew the heavy bone pin from the desk’s bronze hasp.
