The sky within the psychic bridge did not clear after the first wave of decay; it turned the color of a bruised lung.
Nyx stood in what remained of the cottage’s orchard. The golden wheat field from their previous visits was gone, replaced by a vast stretch of gray, smoking stubble that crunched like bone beneath her bare feet. Beside her, Vane was no longer the relaxed man in the linen tunic. He stood in the blackened grass wearing the high-collared, archaic armor of a First-Era Commander, his hand white-knuckled on the hilt of a greatsword that was notched and dripping with a thick, iridescent grease.
The Blight was no longer creeping; it was hunting.
"It’s the same year," Vane whispered, his blue eyes fixed on the horizon where the ancient spires of a proto-Silver-Crest were crumblin
