Location:Obsidian Academy — Qin's Study
Date/Time:2 Ashwhisper, 9942 AZI
Realm:Lower Realm
The wards announced themselves before the door did.
Seven of them, stacked, and from the corridor they were nothing at all. From inside, they were a pressure at the back of the teeth and a smell of old copper with a struck-flint edge underneath it, and a thinning of everything that came in on a bond. Reiko went distant the moment she crossed the threshold — still there, still hers, but heard through water.
Heizan was in the chair by the wall with his bare feet flat on stone that had not been above freezing since Voidmarch. He did not look up. Qin's cuffs had fresh ink on them and dry ink under it, and the window behind him showed the same gray it had shown for two months.
"I want to tell them," Jayde said.
Qin had been expecting something. He had not been expecting that, and she watched him take the whole of a breath, deciding which question to ask first.
"Tell whom?"
