The shift was not a doorway. It was a sense crash.
Ren Vale took a single stride down the goat track, his boots leaving the freezing, ash-coated dark rock of the notch. And stepped directly into the month of June.
The change hit his thirty-one-year-old senses like a physical blow. The choking, leaden silence of the Grey Waste vanished, replaced by the ear-splitting, vibrant clamor of a bustling country market. The air was no longer minus four degrees and reeking of sulfur. It was seventy-four degrees, thick with the golden aroma of fresh-baked rye bread, blooming honeysuckle, damp river mud, and horse manure.
Bright, warm, natural sunlight bathed his face, so intense after the monochromatic glare of the waste that his grey eyes watered.
Beside him, Mira gasped. Her left hand tightened on his wrist, her fingers warm and trembling. Her right arm—faceted smoky quartz from collarbone to fingertip—didn’t flare with alarm. Instead, the violet soft glow softened into a deep, semi-clear indigo that mirrored the summer sky.
“Ren,” she whispered. Her voice carried naturally without the thick, sticky muffling of the ash plain. “Listen to the birds.”
High in the branches of four towering elm trees that shaded the cobblestone square, thrushes were singing.
