The descent from the apex sanctum took forty minutes.
For Ren Vale, every single one of the three hundred dark rock risers was a measured, painful exercise in arithmetic. His left shoulder, freshly forced back into its socket, throbbed with a sickening, rhythmic pulse that made his collarbone ache down to his chest bone. His left knee, thick with inflamed fluid, refused to bend past twenty degrees. He had to lead with his right boot on every step. He swung his stiffened leg outward in the awkward, deliberate gait of an old ditch-digger who had spent forty years in wet peat.
“Lean more of your weight against my shoulder, Ren,” Mira said gently, her living left arm wrapped firmly around his ribs, her hip tucked against his thigh to steady his descent.
“If I lean any harder, I’ll snap your collarbone,” Ren grunted. He wiped a smear of dried blood and black ash from his upper lip with his frayed lambskin sleeve.
“You won’t snap quartz, you stubborn fool,” she countered softly, though her dark eyes were filled with fierce, quiet tenderness. “The crystal is solid down to the fifth rib. It could support a draft mule.”
Beside them, Chrono-Scribe Ren walked with silent, measured strides. The Scribe’s slate-grey coat was blackened by gold-silver metal scorch marks. His silver swinging weight cords were frayed. But his gaze was clear. Between his fingers, he held the cracked hourglass.
