The transition from the lush, Dawn-Lily-covered peaks of the Obsidian Sanctum to the desolate reaches of the Bone-Sown Tundra was like watching a vibrant painting being bleached by a corrosive acid.
I stood at the edge of the Sanguine Range, my feet sinking into a fine, powdery substance that was not snow, but the pulverized remains of a thousand prehistoric shifters. The air here was a stagnant violet, thick with the scent of ozone and the dry, papery smell of ancient marrow. Above us, the Mirror Moon hung in the sky like a silver coin tossed into a bruised sea, its unblinking surface reflecting the world not as it was, but as it was meant to be in Aria's "Perfect Vision"—a world where every movement was a scripted reflection and no one ever had to bleed.
The "Dead-Zone" was absolute.
