The white glare did not arrive like dawn; it arrived like an executioner’s blade falling across the neck of the world.
In an instant, the taproom of the Lantern Inn vanished into absolute, blinding brilliance. There were no walls, no ceiling beams of cured oak, no smell of stale ale or winter smoke. Elin’s stiffened form dissolved from Jon Hale’s arms, her warmth scattering into the freezing void like dry ash before a gale. The roar of the weir, the screams of the militia, and the distant rumble of the Old Hill were sheared away in a single stroke, replaced by a silence so vast, so profound, that Jon could hear the slow, rhythmic grinding of his own teeth.
Time was not merely stopping. It was being reeled backward upon the iron spool of the Crown Furnace, dragged through the dark like a fish on a braided line.
Jon did not close his eyes.
Across nine cycles of blood, ruin, and awakening, he had learned that closing one’s eyes in the reset was a surrender. If an ordinary mortal closed his eyes, the mind forgot; the memories of the burning bridge, the shattered parapet, and the screaming horses were smoothed away like writing on a wax tablet held before a candle flame.
