Step one hundred and forty.
Ren Vale’s left knee screamed with a painful, grinding friction that felt as though someone had poured crushed river gravel beneath his kneecap. His breath rattled in his throat—a harsh, ragged wheeze that scraped against his thirty-one-year-old bronchi like dried husk. Sweat stung his eyes, matting coarse, stark-silver hair against his forehead and temples.
He was thirty-one.
Chronologically, nineteen summers had passed since he first opened his eyes in the lower ward of Val-Khorat. But biologically, his joint cords had absorbed thirty-one winters of tension, cold rain, and workshop dust. His calves were knotted with stringy cramps. His lower back ached with the dull, persistent soreness of an artisan who had bent over a binding bench for fifteen thousand hours.
“Don’t lean forward on the risers,” Chrono-Scribe Ren murmured from half a pace behind his right elbow. The Scribe’s breath was barely heard, cool and rhythmic as a grandfather clock. “When you stoop, your balance point shifts six inches past your toes. It increases the load on your thigh muscles by twenty-two percent. Keep your spine plumb, Conservator. You’re an old man now. Walk like one.”
“Shut up,” Ren rasped, dragging his boot up to riser one hundred and forty-one.
