Part Two:
THE SHATTERGLASS DUNES
The ground turned to glass beneath their feet. What had begun as hardened sand thickened into a dull crust, then fractured into brittle shards, and then resolved into solid plates that were heavy enough to resist the wind’s erosion. The dunes had not vanished, but stood arrested in mid-motion. Warped ridges of crystal pushed up from the desert floor like frozen waves. Some curved into vast arcs that twisted like the exposed ribcage of a fossilised leviathan, black-veined with streaks of fused mineral. Others thrust upwards in serrated ranks, sharp as the teeth of a buried colossus waiting for the unwary to wander inside its jaw. Together, they formed a labyrinth of glass; fractured fangs, ridges, blades and spines that stretched for kilometres in every direction.
Midnight moved with measured caution, reading the subtle betrayals of the ground. Yves understood why. For every formation that rose towards the sky, another bore downward. 
were cut through with fissures that tore the open the earth. Some chasms lay exposed, their edges chipped pale by wind and heat. Others hid beneath plated crusts of shifting shards; deceptively solid layers that held for one step, perhaps two, before they gave way.
Yves could see some of them. The shallow fractures. The obvious ones. His Second Sight did not penetrate far into the glass. The dense mass swallowed perception after less than a metre. Beyond that, he found no reliable distinction between support and collapse. Here, he relied on Midnight. He placed his steps where she placed her paws, his Rothar held ready at his fingertips to conjure shards if the ground failed them.
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