Frost had come down on the outer ring overnight, and Nyx was using it against him.
She had been doing it for six minutes. Every time Vane planted his back foot, the Dreamscape laid a second floor over the real one, a thin false layer of stone a finger's width higher or lower than the truth, so that his weight landed a hair early or a hair late and the strike he had built on top of it came out wrong. It was a small trick, and it had beaten him most mornings that spring.
He stopped trusting the floor.
The Usurper read the frost instead. Real stone held it in a grey crust that cracked under pressure; the Dreamscape's copy only looked cold. Null Point found the seam between the two in less than a second, and Vane put his heel on the side that broke.
Nyx felt the change and smiled with half her mouth.
"There he is," she said.
