The clatter of the gold-silver metal shard against the hard speckled rock stone base should have been the final sound on the mountain.
It lay between them, six inches from the black dark oak-ink-well, its mirrored surface reflecting the swirling grey clouds of the fractured sky. For five long seconds, neither man breathed. The cold mountain wind swept across the twenty-pace enclosure of cured sheepskin, rustling the pinned edges of the thick parchment scrolls. Mira remained kneeling in the slush beside the older Ren, her left hand resting gently on his worn woolen shoulder, her quartz arm glowing with a soft, steady violet warmth.
The logic was finished. The inquest was finished. The proof had been entered in duplicate upon first-age sheepskin.
Then, from deep within the older man’s ribs, came a sound like wet leather tearing under tension.
The Man Who Returned gasped. His eyes, which had softened into human grief just moments before, widened until the whites showed red with broken tiny blood vessels. He seized his chest with both hands, clutching at the coarse homespun of his coat. Beneath the threadbare cloth, beneath the salt-bleached linen shirt, the branded letters of the Seventh Void flared into blinding, blazing bright crimson.
