The world turned into a silent flash of blinding white calcium.
Ren Vale hit the flat stone slabs on his right hip, his forehead slamming against the dark rock dust. He couldn’t draw breath. His left collarbone was not broken in a single fracture. It had shattered into four distinct, jagged quartz fragments that ground against each other with every tiny flutter of his lungs. A sharp crystal-clear edge had pierced the left subclavian muscle tissue. It sent pulses of cold, electric agony straight into the spinal column at the base of his skull.
His vision swam with black static. He tried to reach out his right hand, but his fingers were numb. He clawed weakly at the loose shale.
Beside him, Mira didn’t scream.
With the lightning reflexes of a girl who had spent five years catching falling coal sacks, she threw herself across the dark rock ledge. Her faceted smoky quartz right arm shot out over the empty deep gap. Her crystal-clear fingers locked around the braided gold-silver metal wire binding of the falling Grimoire of Cleavage six inches before it cleared the rim.
She hauled the heavy black diamond volume back onto the stone with a desperate heave of her shoulder. It slammed her back against the rock face, her chest chiming with wild, scared sour note.
