The tip of the mammoth ivory awl hovered an inch above the glowing, pulsating crystal of Mira’s right collarbone.
The heat streaming from her skin was so intense that the silver wire wrap around the ivory began to turn a faint, rainbow-bright straw-yellow. Mira’s teeth were gritted. Her silver-gray eyes were locked onto Ren’s face with terrifying, total trust as she fought for every scrap of air in her hardening lungs.
“Breathe, Mira,” Ren whispered, his voice cutting through the rising roar of the Heart. “Look at me. Don’t look at the sphere.”
“I’m... Looking at you, Ren,” she gasped, her left fingers digging into his wrist with painful strength.
Ren didn’t hesitate.
He drove the silver wire tip of the awl directly against the main smoky quartz facet resting over her third rib.
CRACKLE!
A sharp, violent shower of violet and cyan sparks exploded from the point of contact, stinging Ren’s face and scorching the frayed linen of his sleeves. The Ink-Rot in his blood-flow system flared in savage, painful sympathy. His forearm veins blackened, boiling with acid-burning acid as the ancient burning acid in his blood met the ancient marrow of the astral entity.
