Book One – Chapter 3

Yves had not known what to expect. He had learned the contours of this dimension and conditioned himself to its demands, but he had never shifted during the Witching Hour, and never from a place that was so violently compromised as . He had dreaded the absence of light. He had dreaded extinction. Neither had awaited him. There was no darkness here, and no trace of T̰́̇ͦ̀è̸̷̸̬̤̗̊_̸̵̰̦̗̒͜ȟ̗̍ͤa̶͉͉͍̭̰̅̀̈͜ͅȓ̶̶̛̦͇͙̟̈̿͒ͮ͑̋̚͡u̟͖͔̖̙͙͆̄̿ͩͧ̃̽̓̈̌̀͟͞n’s destruction. There was no sign that the force passing through his native reality possessed any authority in this one. The Witch Moon had no influence here — none that he could perceive. So far, everything aligned with his experiences from prior crossings.

The realm into which he had emerged was both familiar and strange. It was familiar in principle, yet strange in every particular; legible in its grand design yet utterly foreign in its foundation. It was both mesmerising to behold and terrifying to inhabit.

Bright and ashen hues defined everything he could distinguish. His surroundings appeared as fractured sequences of suspended radiance. It was as if the entire world was made of translucent shards and pallid light. Beneath him lay planes of compressed light. They were broad sheets that inclined across one another, and bands of muted brilliance that overlapped at oblique angles. Their pale sheens created, reflected and disturbed a seemingly impossible depth. Some remained even and uninterrupted. Others rose into crystalline formations. They merged into vast constructions whose reach exceeded his perception, and went far beyond comprehension. Most of these shard formations appeared fully static. None of them were truly in motion, but a few seemed to be held in slow, perpetual rearrangement. Their arrangements altered over long intervals, and only by almost imperceptible degrees. They retained their extent while slowly adjusting back and forth.