Book One – Chapter 1

Yves felt the cracks before he saw them. The sand compacted beneath his boots, stiffening into something brittle, more solid but no less unstable. Colour drained from the dunes. Gold and rust faded into a dull grey sheen. Beneath a thin film of sand, pale and irregular fractures appeared.

A boundary.

They had reached the place where sand surrendered to glass.

The threshold of .

Midnight fell behind, then stopped. Her body tensed, the fur along her neck drawn taut with warning.

Yves halted. He knew that even the desert beasts did not wander here. Midnight must be sensing the same thing that made them recoil. Yves felt it too, through her; a pressure beneath the surface, a wrongness without form or direction. A dread that stirred the marrow before the mind. It was the kind of awareness that beasts carried without language; the certainty that a place was claimed.

They both understood it. They both knew they should not be here. They had never crossed the boundary before.

For a moment, Yves met Midnight’s gaze. Then he stepped forward.

She followed.

They crossed into .