The animal fat candle burned down to a pool of liquid grease on the felt work-mat, its wick drowning in its own fuel.
Across the cave floor, Mira slept on her bed of cedar boughs, her breathing slow, deep, and rhythmic. In the dim amber light, her smoky quartz right arm lay curled against her chest. It glowed with that soft, peaceful lavender hue that kept the freezing draft from touching her skin. Beside her, Chrono-Scribe Ren sat leaning against the stone wall, his eyes closed. His breathing was silent, his mind suspended in the shallow frozen stillness fold he used in place of sleep.
Ren Vale was alone.
He sat on his folding canvas stool, his thirty-one-year-old knees stiff from the long watch, his hand resting inside the breast of his frayed lambskin apron.
His fingers closed around the cold gold-silver metal frame of the Speculum of Forfeited Paths.
He withdrew the eight-sided mirror, laying it flat upon the center of his workbench beside his earthen ink-pot and his mammoth ivory awl.
The glass was alive.
In the upper tiers, the sixteen silhouettes of his burned futures were quiet. In the first tier, Vane Vale slept in an armchair with an open ledger across his knees. In the second tier, Brother Ren knelt in silent prayer beside his lead basin. In the third, the Ash Emperor leaned upon his sword atop a snow-covered castle wall.
