The clearing at the center of the Glass Forest was a tiered arena of black fiery glass a quarter of a mile wide.
Here, the quartz trees didn’t grow. The ground was scoured smooth, fused into a seamless, mirror-polished floor of black glass that reflected the blazing bright spectacle suspended above it.
Resting in the center of the tiered arena was the fallen star.
It wasn’t a flaming ball of gas, nor was it a cold lump of star-fallen iron. It was a living, sky organism the size of a five-story cathedral. A many-sided, sharp-angled sphere of living starlight, shifting through impossible hues of violet, rose-gold, and deep sapphire. Its surface was not solid stone. It was a swirling, crystal-clear matrix that rippled like liquid diamond beneath a thin skin of cooling crust.
Every eight seconds, the sphere pulsed.
A wave of warm, deep ringing hum swelled outward from the core, with a sound so deep, so vast, that it didn’t enter through the ears. It shook directly in the bones of Ren Prime’s chest. A slow, majestic heartbeat that had been ticking since before the first human city was carved from mud.
Yet Ren stepped onto the black glass floor. Then, the beauty of the sky entity was eclipsed by the monstrous heavy-duty horror strapped to its flesh.
