Saffi was too close.
She'd been leaning forward - her face near the glass, her eyes wide, watching the chaos below with the fixed intensity of someone whose analytical mind had been presented with an event that defied every model it had ever known. She'd seen the lightning erupt, seen the glass shatter, the paper burn, the steel bend, the barrier transforming and instead of pulling back she'd pressed closer, because Saffi's instinct when faced with the incomprehensible was to observe it harder.
The cracks reached her section of the ceiling. The glass beneath her palms spiderwebbed, the fractures racing outward from the impact point below, and through the spreading cracks the dark lightning was visible - climbing, branching, arcing toward her.
Raizen's body moved.
