Midnight arrived over Mount Khorat with the sudden, freezing drop of an alpine frost.
The birch fire in the center of the ruined cloister had burned down to a mound of glowing crimson embers. Mira was asleep beneath two heavy wool blankets, her head resting on a saddlebag, her smoky quartz arm tucked warmly against her chest, chiming softly in the quiet darkness.
Ren Prime sat alone beside the altar stone, tilting the Speculum toward the starlight.
The eight-sided gold-silver metal frame was humming with a faint, high-hum shaking that made the fine bones in his ear canal itch.
Beneath the glass, the eighth tier was fully crystal-hardened. Scribe Ren standing with his silver-nipped quill, surrounded by drifting ribbons of blackened thick parchment. But in the ninth tier, directly below the scribe’s stone stand, the time ash was heaving like boiling mud.
Through the clearing mist, a towering figure was resolving: an austere, stone-faced judge clad in heavy lead-grey robes, holding the massive bronze Lead Scales of Khorat in one hand and a black glass gavel in the other. His eyes were bound with a strip of black silk, fully blind to superficial appearances. But his blindfold turned directly toward Ren Prime with devastating, court clarity.
