Dawn came like thin copper poured over the world, sharp, metallic, and leaving everything a little more fragile. The camp they had made in a ruined kiln held its heat in small, stubborn pockets; smoke curled from a brazier Owen kept going with a handful of scraped coal. Around them, the broken shoulders of statues threw long, patient shadows. The stars had not quite left, but the sky had lost its tolerance for softness.
Leo woke before the others, as he often did, because the voices inside him measured time differently from the living. They had an economy of minutes and a taste for the smallest variations of light. He lay on his back and watched the twin-cloud arcs that still curled on the horizon, like sleeping serpents he could not name. The Stability Braces hummed against his ribs, an undercurrent that had become so familiar he sometimes mistook it for the rhythm of his own body.
