The ink-well on the hard speckled rock stone base was black as a starless well.
Within the twenty-pace enclosure of cured sheepskin, the air was still, cold, and clean. Outside the white tape boundary, the seven skies continued their violent, grinding dance: black heavy-duty coal-smoke churning to the north, violet dead-space pulsing directly overhead, rust-red dunes whipping to the west, hadal ocean spray battering the southern crags, and the smoldering ash-fires of the Great Loom curling along the ridges.
Ren Prime stood behind his side of the stone base, his mammoth ivory awl poised over the spirit-thick parchment roll. His wool work shirt was damp with sweat beneath his leather apron. His breath rose in steady plumes of white vapor.
Across the three feet of granite, the Man Who Returned stood with his scarred hands resting flat against the stone. Stripped of his time shifted weight field, the older man looked fragile. The deep creases around his silver-flecked eyes were etched with the tiredness of four hundred years spent carrying the dead. His knuckles were swollen with the chill, his shoulders rounded beneath his homespun coat.
Fifty paces away, by the crackling juniper fire, Mira sat upon a slab of broken red stone. Her left hand held a pine-stick metal pen dipped in lampblack. Meanwhile, her right arm—flawless, faceted smoky quartz—glowed with that steady, low pure silver hum that anchored the boundary line to the bedrock of Val-Khorat.
