Book One – Chapter 9

Midnight’s intuition operated more naturally and swiftly, beyond Yves’ conscious reasoning. When she shared her intuition, he felt the results of her instincts without receiving an explanation. He had learned to trust this intuition instead of demanding or trying to dissect individual sensations. For Yves, sensing what Midnight felt had become an additional sense, as natural and prominent as any of his own. Respectively, with Midnight now gone and the overwhelming Vicha presence obliterating all other energies, Yves’ perception of his surroundings had greatly diminished, which he felt intensely, along with his deteriorating sight.

The dark veil of Teharun enveloped the world. Everything around Yves plunged into suffocating darkness more potent than the night herself. He kept his eyes barely open, mere slits, wary. He could not completely dismiss the notion that the barthar might seek vengeance, waiting to strike in a moment of vulnerability. Yves had observed with his second sight that the beast and the marrels had huddled up in the second dilapidated shelter.

Yves had no feeling for how much time passed. He could never tell during witching hour. Teharun would tell. And so, he rested. Sometimes, he closed one eye or the other, to give them a moment’s reprieve. Perhaps, at times, he closed both, but he remained awake throughout — at least, so he thought. Yet, within a blink, the storm vanished. Yves straightened up, alerted by the sudden stillness. The clouds had shifted. The thrashing rain around his shelter had ceased, though its distant echoes lingered in the damp air. Through second sight, Yves recognised the distorted storm energies in the far reaches of the plateau.

What was happening? Had he slept? Immediately, Yves honed his senses on his surroundings. His sled appeared undisturbed. Aside from the barthar and the marrels, he sensed no other presences in the aftermath of the storm.