Book One – Chapter 2

Yves stared too. He could not see beyond the edge. His Second Sight failed him still, maddeningly so. The traces of light he perceived were too thin, too brief and too violently displaced for him to seize into any meaningful impression. Each strike left only a scattering trace, no more than a blurred sequence of ruptures. It was a disturbingly inadequate reflection of the violence his body had just experienced with much greater clarity. What remained was the blunt poverty of ordinary sight, which was perception pared down to its crudest function; assembled from surfaces and obstructed by every piece of matter in its way. Right now, several tonnes of broken civilisation lay shattered in precisely that way. The dune concealed the storm itself and permitted Yves only its consequences: sudden flares along the rim, white-fractured seconds that rendered the ruins with impossible sharpness, surges of radiance swelling above the crest, and, caught within, swarms of distorted shadows that were thrown into existence the same moment they were erased.

Yves pressed his scarf against his mouth and drew a breath, slow but deep enough for words. It tasted of hot mineral dust.

“The chains burst toward us,” he said. “We are the strongest concentration of energy, this close to the rim.”

Another concussion rolled over the ridge. Yves lowered himself further. The shift in weight loosened more fragments around his boots. His eyes moved from the crest to the sliding debris, then to Midnight. “We need another approach. Somewhere stable, to set up the mirror.”