Book One – Chapter 3

Above Yves, faint strata of grey imposed a sense of enclosure, without forming a horizon or anything that could be reasoned into a sensible suggestion of sky. Rather, it was layers of condensed light that reflected the structures beneath and around him, as though there was a second, inverted world overhead. It seemed a fading world. The nuances were barely distinguishable.

Ashen radiance refracted across those upper strata, and everywhere below. It spread and scattered in strange paths, which created reflections with the most intricate geometries. There were shadows too, everywhere within. These shadows were not darkness. They did not form as the absence cast by an obstruction of light. They were the residue of excessive refraction; dense distortions where too much light crossed itself and compounded. The paths disrupted another until brightness itself became obscure.

Their intersections produced beams of ashen white and muted grey in varying saturations, bands of pallor that existed only in motion; thickening and thinning, shearing apart and ever again crossing each other to render contour to this world of never-final form.