Chapter 1

Anna heard the old steward long before his lantern’s chalky orange bloom appeared. She’d first sensed his presence from the whine of an oak door farther down the slope, its staccato creaks cutting through the hush of the predawn drizzle, the twisting wail of mountain winds. She waited in stillness by the open shutters, watching the fog shift and creep over blue-black rock, studying the ethereal glow as it grew sharper and nearer. Her legs were still awash in the prickling numbness that accompanied rising from her cushion.

Four hours since the midnight bell, seven since she’d snuffed out her chamber’s lone candle and sat to follow her breath.

The razor-mind did not stir, did not blink, did not wander as the steward came to her door and rapped on the bronze face. Instead, it curiously trailed the seed of a thought blossoming in absolute stillness: Why?

“Knowing One,” the steward croaked in river-tongue, “have you risen from slumber?”

Anna lifted the latch and opened the door. Her steward’s wide-brimmed hat dripped incessantly, flopping about with the breeze, but could not mask his concern. Every wrinkle and weathered fold on his face bled a horrid truth. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing so severe, I imagine,” he replied, wringing his hands within twill sleeves. “Brother Konrad has sent for you.”

“At this hour?”

“Yes,” the steward said. “Precisely now. Yet the reason for this summoning will not pass his lips, Knowing One. Forgive me for my vague words.”

Nothing so severe. She met the steward’s blue-gray eyes, full of haunting curiosity, then gazed down at the monastery’s craggy silhouette. Few truly understood the austerity of Anna’s practice, the importance of cloistering herself for weeks on end. Even fewer knew better than to summon her during the rituals of purification. She counted Konrad among those few.

As she followed the narrow, stone-lined path that carved across the slope, she took in the foggy sprawl of the lowlands and the black clouds blotting eastern skies. It was dead now, free of the ravens and hawks that often wheeled over the ridges, utterly silent aside from their boots crunching over gravel and earth. The monastery was a dark mass, not yet roused for its morning rites. Not even the northern bell tower, a black stripe looming against muddy slate above her, showed any sign of the watchman and his lantern.

Yet something had come.

Jutting out over the lowlands was the monastery’s setstone perch, which hadn’t seen a supply delivery in close to three cycles. Only it was not empty, nor was it occupied by the violet nerashi that Golyna or Kowak often sent. Anna glimpsed a sleek, battered nerash resting behind a sheen of mist, seated directly above the iron struts that bolted the perch to an adjacent outcropping.

“What is that?” Anna asked the steward, clenching her hood against a howling gust.

“I know not.” His words were thick with unease.

In the main hall, a group of Halshaf sisters worked to light the candles lining the meditative circle. Each new spark and flicker drove away another patch of blackness, revealing glimmering mosaics upon the walls, banners emblazoned with Kojadi script, the reflective bronze bowls that hummed their celestial song each morning. The sudden flurry of footsteps upon crimson carpeting did not interrupt their soft, tireless chant in a dead tongue:

With this breath, I arise. With this breath, I pass away.