Book One – Chapter 1

Midnight’s reflections were worse. Her black coat smeared into dark curling streaks, pulled thin across the glass as though darkness itself had been dragged through her body. In some reflections, she barely held shape at all. She became a spill of night, the hunting absence of a beast suggested by motion rather than form.

Yves strained to never lose the real Midnight from sight. He noticed her stride change. She shifted into a low, deliberate stalk; the posture of pursuit, or of being pursued. Her shoulders rolled forward. Her ears flicked at sharp, restless angles.

It took several moments more before the sound reached him too.

First came a low, distant wail; a thin and uncertain pressure inside the ear. Then came the screeches. They knifed between the monoliths, piercing and cutting each other off in high-pitched clashes. Ahead, the pillars stood so densely that they seized what remained of the stormwinds. Where the wind pressed against them, the glass vibrated and returned the force as warped resonance; cries without source, sound bent back upon itself, echoes that arrived before their origin had passed.

With every step, receded, and so did the Veil, until both dissolved amid the infinite reflections of the monolith maze. The storm fell away behind them. Ahead, the screams multiplied. They raced through the spiral of monoliths like mountain sprites. The labyrinth raged with their violent cries as they rammed against the mirrored surfaces, fractured, overlapped, distorted and twisted, turned upon themselves until they broke their own beginnings and came back altered, only to fight and devour each other. Origin and direction lost all meaning. One sound became many. Many became one. It was like witchtalk, like hundreds of curses spoken, sung, and screamed at once, compressed into a single unbearable chorus.

    The Witch Tear burned.