Two beings stood in a dead place at the bottom of a dead Dimension, and the two Hieroglyph Runestones waited in the dark ahead of them.
The first was a cube. A vast one, obsidian shading to grey, each face wider than an Observable Existence, and across every face ran carvings in a tongue so old that the marks did not sit still under the eye; rearranging themselves whenever a mind tried to hold them.
The second was a sphere, greater than the cube, perfectly round and perfectly cold, and its surface too was written over end to end, spiraling script that wound around it without beginning and without end.
Serala stood beside Vakochev and looked at the two shapes for a long time.
She was beautiful. Dark hair, a sharp and patient face, eyes that missed nothing. She had walked beside the maker of the Scales through more dead places than either of them could count, and she had never yet asked him a foolish question.
