The rain of vials was not a storm of glass and liquid; it was a torrential downpour of unlived lives.
In the "Space Between Breaths," gravity was a fickle suggestion, but as the Middle Glass-Sister, Lyra, raised her bone-staff, the billions of vials suspended in the grey sky began to fall with the weight of terminal velocity. Each one was a distinct frequency, a shimmering cylinder of possibility that whistled through the stagnant air. When they hit the salt-plains, they didn't just break; they detonated.
Clink-shatter.
The sound was followed by a plume of "Ghost-Smoke"—a dense, iridescent vapor that carried the sensory data of a choice never made. I stood at the center of the Archive, my hands shielding my stomach, as the world around me became a kaleidoscopic nightmare.
