The world was losing its edges, dissolving into a spinning vortex of glacial azure lightning and white frost.
Jon Hale remained on his knees upon the weightless flagstones of the vault, his thighs pinned against the base of the basalt pedestal. Beside him, suspended three inches above the warded viewing plate by the coils of blue force, the corpse of Sir Cael Ardent drifted like an effigy upon a water tomb. The Solen broadsword rose from the knight’s shattered collarbone, its cold steel crossguard glowing white-hot, casting long, twisting shadows across Cael’s blood-spattered face.
Across the chamber, Lady Signe Lorr was clinging to the iron hinge of the gallery door with both hands, her dark hair whipped into a frenzy by the howling gale of backwards-running time.
“Jon!” her voice drifted through the roar, thin as spun glass. “The threshold is closing! Release the calfskin or you will ground the entire collapse into your own skeleton! You are trying to drag thirty pounds of municipal wood and leather through an aperture calibrated for a single soul!”
“I am not letting go!” Jon shouted into the storm, his voice hoarse and raw from the biting ozone. “If this book burns in the vacuum, the town wakes up as cattle! There will be no record of the common charter! The King’s commissioners will write whatever lies they please across our graves!”
