The descent felt endless, a frantic tumble through air that had been ionized into freezing, sharp-edged glass. Lucien felt his limbs spinning in the void, but there was no fear, only a strange, hollow clarity. The silver lattice on his arm had disintegrated, and with it, the constant, maddening hum of the Architect's data streams had finally gone silent.
He struck the earth not with a crash, but with a bone-jarring thud that drove the air from his lungs. The impact left him buried in the soft, ash-like soil of the valley floor, miles away from the Academy.
For a long time, the only sound was the howling of the wind and the distant, dying groan of the Throne. He lay still, his vision flickering between crimson and black, waiting for the inevitable arrival of the Grave-Worm's scraps or th
