The courtyard of the Old Customs Exchange was dead quiet at the third hour after midnight.
The dual moons had reached their zenith. The silver crescent of Prime Khorat and the lavender crystal ring of the Sun-Crown Hegemony cast crisscrossing sharp-angled shadows through the stone peristyle. In the center of the courtyard, an ancient copper-rimmed well sat sunk into the flags, its wooden crank winch creaking softly in the river breeze.
Ren Vale carried two empty wooden water buckets, his boots making a soft, rhythmic crunch against the river gravel.
His head was still pounding. But the cold night air helped clear the thick, choking fog of the kitchen. His brass breathing collar hissed every fourteen seconds, a steady, clockwork friend that reminded him he was alive, that he was breathing, that he had survived the sea-floor dark of the Hadal Trench.
He hooked the first bucket onto the iron well-chain and leaned over the stone rim.
He lowered the bucket. The chain rattled, paying out links into the black water fifty feet below.
Then, without warning, the floor beneath his boots dissolved.
It didn’t collapse physically. The stones remained solid. But in his mind, the perceptual floor of linear reality snapped in half. A sensation like freezing saltwater poured down the back of his neck. Ren fell forward against the damp stone well-curb, his fingers clawing at the mossy mortar.
