Book One – Chapter 1

Within all that hostility, there was also beauty. Even now, at night, there was light. Yves had not seen it properly from the outside. It grew gradually, the deeper he and Midnight walked into the Veil, as though the descent drew brightness inward. It collected and concealed what dusk had taken from the dunes, or perhaps, it had never let the darkness pass this far. At the Veil’s core, light was everywhere; all above and around, and in the ruins at their feet. It showed as countless flashes of silver; traces of ςεψ and βυγς seized by the falling shards and refracted again, scattered and gathered by the torrent, until the light seemed woven into the Veil’s very fabric.

Yves and Midnight walked side by side. They walked for long minutes, through this heart of brilliance. Reflections moved over them in white and silver streams that filled the shattered air. Crystal dust gathered at their feet, fine as ash yet sharp as needles. It sliced through Yves’ boots and trousers. It cut into Midnight’s paws.

It took half an hour before the descent began to loosen. What had been almost solid gradually frayed into visible strands and sheets. The cataract thinned into a hard, needling rain, and then into scattered falls of crystal dust. The roar broke apart into separate sounds: strikes, skitters, faint ringing impacts, and finally nothing but the dry whisper of minuscule fragments settling across glass.

Yves and Midnight walked on until even that diminished. Until the expanse behind the Veil open up to them.