I'd assumed the Harmony trial would give me a stranger to work with. A shadow, or a construct, or some invented ally built out of my memories.
The Crown had a better sense of humour than that.
The path let me out into a long, narrow hall of grey stone, as tall as a palace and perhaps a hundred metres long. At each end, set into the floor, stood a pillar of dark crystal the height of a man. Between them, the air was wrong. It shimmered faintly, the way air does over hot stone, and when I looked closely at the floor I could see dust settling on it far faster than dust should settle. Moss crept along the cracks as I watched. A brass sconce on the wall beside me went green, and then brown, and then crumbled.
Time was running fast in here. And the closer to the pillars, the faster it ran.
A door opened at the far end of the hall, and Ren Kagu walked through it.
