Book One – Chapter 1

Beneath his ribs, the Witch Tear burned.

A cold, mineral heat. Constant. Intrusive. Sickening. Unchanged since the Witch Mother had sewn it into him. It was a tarnish to his core; a parasite knot of essence that fed from him in order to preserve itself. It fed with bastard greed. As pulled, so did the Tear. Yves knew that before could draw even a fraction of the Witch Tear from him, the Tear would spend all of him to keep itself sewn for as long as possible. First his Rothar. Then his essence. It would take what it required to uphold its own existence from anything it had bound itself to. It would not let go of him until he himself came undone.

Yves had carried the Tear for three horrible months. He had carried it all the way here. Crossing , he endured it for hours more.

Eventually, the wind weakened. There, where the shrieking storm of slicing shards softened into a steady hiss, the airborne blades lost their lift. They fell in a hard rain of crystalline needles that struck the glassen ground with a continuous roar; the shattering scream of a million mirrors breaking every second that made it impossible to separate impact from echo.

Their fall traced a wavering threshold.