Dawn broke over Val-Khorat not with a fracture of light, but with an unbroken flood of pale autumn gold.
Ren Prime stood upon the crest of the Great Meridian Bridge, resting his calloused forearms against the cool iron stone railing. Down on the River Skell, the water flowed black and steady beneath the morning mist, free of the violent time whirlpools and colorful reality shears that had churned the riverbanks for thirty days. The river was just water again. He carried chips of willow bark and drifted foam toward the southern sea.
The city around him was no longer a hallucination. It was solid, permanent, and astonishing.
The physical superposition that had threatened to tear the valley apart had settled into a stone-built marvel unlike anything known on the continent. Where the soot-blackened brick warehouses of Prime Khorat met the river, their foundations were now rooted in massive, rusticated blocks of ancient alabaster. Gaslamps of wrought black iron were mounted directly onto sweeping classical peristyle rows of stone pillars. Steam pipes clad in riveted brass ran alongside marble aqueducts carved with solar eagles. And the iron frame stand bridges of the Ducal railroad rested on sweeping stone arches that had stood in an unchosen timeline for three hundred years.
