For a long moment nobody in the doorway moved, and the granary's low rhythmic pulse filled the silence, a sound like breathing that Rama felt as much in his chest as in his ears. Surya's face, what remained visible of it above the mass swallowing his shoulders, hung slack and unresponsive, eyes closed, skin gone the same pale gray as the villagers below.
"Surya," Rama said anyway, because there was nothing else to do with his mouth in that moment, and because some part of him refused to accept that a man could be standing right there and simply be beyond reaching.
Nothing answered. The pulsing tissue around Surya's body brightened faintly at the sound of his own name, a ripple of pale light moving outward through its veins like a held note finally released, and Sekar grabbed Rama's arm before he could take another step.
