The dark rock overhang smelled of cold sulfur, frozen soot, and dead pine resin.
Outside the shallow cave, the northern wind howled across the spine of the ridge, driving fine needles of silver ash horizontally through the darkness. Inside, sheltered from the gale by a three-foot wall of stacked granite blocks, a single animal fat candle burned with a pale, steady yellow flame.
Ren Vale sat on a low canvas folding stool before his portable keeper’s workbench.
The pine bench was scarred with decades of acid burns, knife scrapes, and ink stains, its folding iron legs wedged firmly into the crevices of the rock floor. On the felt work-mat in front of him sat the fourteen ounces of purified chrono-melted rock waste they had recovered from the shattered belfry of Oakhaven.
The melted rock waste was cold—far colder than the surrounding rock.
It looked like molten lead that had cooled inside an iron mold, but when Ren held the candle closer, the dark surface swallowed the light, reflecting only tiny, pinprick star-patterns of dull silver frost. Every few seconds, the frost shifted position across the metal, rearranging itself into micro-patterns that looked uncannily like the ancient cursive of the First High court.
