We moved.
The tatters of my Grey pages clung to the air as his Requiem Mantle pushed in around me. His power was a declaration, an absolute edition of the world. My small truths, my personal laws, were holding, but they were costing me more with every breath. The Skeld Wastes kept score by laying down new, spider-thin sheets of glass where our feet passed.
He wore the Ember now like it was a part of his body. Six fine threads of it slid off his shoulders, combing through the space between us, tasting my intentions. Every time my mind tried to write an ending to a sequence, one of those threads would flick it away. So I stopped writing endings. I wrote beginnings, over and over, letting Valeria find her own conclusions.
But it wasn't enough. He was a fortress, and I was a single soldier at the gate. I needed a key.
