The air in the basement of the Border-Spire was no longer merely air. It had
become a thick, gelatinous medium, saturated with the scent of ozone, ancient
marrow, and the cloying, necrotic sweetness of the High Queen's lilies. The
shattering of the First Gear had sent a shockwave of kinetic energy through the
chamber, but instead of clearing the atmosphere, it had only stirred the
sediment of a thousand years of suppressed trauma.
I knelt in the center of the wreckage, my hands pressed against the cold granite
floor. The silver-violet runes on my skin were no longer shimmering with the
soft light of the dawn; they were jagged, charcoal-colored scars that bled a
fine, grey mist. Every time I drew breath, I felt the scratching of the violet
glass shards in my lungs—the residual infection of the Sieve. I had taken the
agony of the prisoners into my own marrow to save them, and now, that weight was
a mountain I had to carry while my world turned to ash.
