"I finished the second half last night," Tomas said.He sat cross-legged on the bed at the Rusty Ladle with the old book open across his knees and a single lamp burning on the sill. It was late. Outside, the wind off the Rift whined in the shutters. On the other side of the room, Rhea was oiling her sword. Mira had curled up in the corner with her knees under her chin, still wearing her stolen-papers face, half angry and half not sleeping. Ethan sat on the pallet with his back to the wall."I wasn't sure I'd tell you," Tomas went on. "Part of me hoped I'd mistranslated. I went through it three times." He cleared his throat, and his dry voice dropped to a murmur. "I'll read it as plainly as I can. The old tongue is dense. Where I'm guessing, I'll say.""Go on," Ethan said.The old man bent over the page."In the age before the Concord, the Kings came through the Rifts. They were not beasts. They had names, and thrones, and tongues that could unmake a mountain. Seven armies fell in a si

The first thing Ethan noticed was the light.It came from nowhere. There was no sun, only a pale, shifting green that seemed to float between the trees and fall in long splinters across the ground. Each trunk was a column of clear glass, thin as a wrist and tall as a house, leaning gently in the same direction, as though the whole orchard had been bent by a patient wind. Leaves hung from them like blades of ice. When the air moved, they touched, and the sound rolled across the grove in a soft, endless chime.At the roots, something black was spreading.[Glass Tree. Resonant. Loud noise triggers nearby fauna. Root rot: advanced.]"Pretty, isn't it," Selka said, her voice low. "Don't let it fool you. The rot's what matters. Everything in this gate is feeding off it."She walked at the head of the file with her bow half-drawn and her eyes on the ground. Bram came behind her, shield up, sword loose in his hand. Dessa Marrow followed, watchful, her satchel clinking softly with vials. Doran

"Hold the mule still," Dessa said, "and tell me how you knew to close your eyes."She said it casually, the way someone might ask for the salt. She knelt in the broken glass at the shore of the black lake with her satchel open beside her, picking pale blue shards out of Selka's forearm one at a time with a pair of silver tweezers. Selka sucked air through her teeth but didn't complain.Ethan sat on an upturned crate with Biscuit's rope wound around his hand. He'd been waiting for the question for ten minutes."I didn't know," he said. "I guessed.""You guessed.""I thought, if it copies what looks at it, then maybe it can't copy what doesn't." He shrugged. "I read something like it once. In a book of tales. A mirror that kills whoever stares too long.""A book of tales." Dessa dropped a shard into a tin dish. It rang. "And the running? With your eyes shut, across a lake, in a straight line, to the exact spot?""I'm good with animals.""I keep hearing that.""It's true.""I'm sure it i

Ethan stood in front of the desk with his cap in both hands and tried to think.Lying was out. He could see that at once. She had a skill that knew, and she had put it on the table between them like a loaded crossbow. The worst of it was that she hadn't threatened him. She hadn't called a guard. She sat there with the pipe in her fingers and waited, the way a patient woman waits for a pot to boil.Then tell the truth, he thought. As much of it as you can afford."My name is Ethan Vale," he said.Crane's face didn't change."I was born in the lower ward of the capital. I took the awakening exam at twenty, two years late, and the crystal stayed dark. I'm a null. That part is true." He took a breath. "While I was in the Awakening Tower, a seal broke in the basement. A Rift Stalker came up. I was in the lower corridor, where failed candidates are sent. Everyone else escaped. I didn't.""And?""I killed it.""With what?""A guard's dagger." He didn't smile. "And a lot of luck."Crane let t

"Do I know you?" Mira said again.Ethan opened his mouth and nothing came out.He knelt in the mud with the dead chain in his lap and the wind cold on his neck, and looked at the girl he had known for a month. Her braid had come loose. There was a smear of ash on her cheek. She sat up slowly, rubbing her ankle, and the way her eyes went over his face was careful and polite and utterly blank, like a clerk looking for a name in a ledger.[Mira Quill. Human. Level 12. True attitude: Confused. Wary. A grief she cannot name.]A grief she cannot name.He swallowed. It hurt."No," he said. "I don't think so.""Oh." She frowned. "Only you were holding my hand just now. I thought..." She shook her head. "Sorry. It's nothing. I must have hit my head." She pushed up onto her feet and swayed. Ethan's arm came out on its own, and she looked at it, and she took a half step back.He lowered it."Where am I?" she asked. "This is the ash flats. Why am I at the ash flats?""You followed someone out her