Nobody moved.
Nobody breathed.
The hand hung above Black Hollow.
It was so enormous that it should have blotted out the stars.
And yet—
it didn't.
The stars shone through it.
Through the cracks.
Through the fractures.
Through the the places where an entire world had broken and never healed.
It wasn't a hand made of flesh.
It was a hand made of memory.
Of loss.
Of ten thousand years of asking the same question and never receiving an answer.
The throne beneath Draven Ridge did something Midnight had never felt before.
It grieved.
Not for itself.
For the hand.
For the world attached to it.
The realization hit her like a physical blow.
The First World wasn't reaching down to conquer them.
It was reaching because it had forgotten what touching another living thing felt like
