The return to the Sanctum of the Sanguine Moon felt like waking from a dream made of knives into a reality made of silk. After the suffocating, monochromatic silence of the Bone-Sown Tundra and the shrill, harmonic madness of the Labyrinth, the Obsidian Peak was a riot of sensory abundance. The waterfalls, fueled by the melting red glass of the Sanguine Range, roared with a ferocity that sounded like the earth itself laughing. The Dawn-Lilies, which had nearly been choked out by the violet dust, were blooming with renewed vigor, their petals a vibrant, pulsing gradient of gold and ruby that turned the slopes into a sea of living fire.
I stood on the Sovereign's Terrace, the weight of Aidan in my arms the only anchor I needed. My son was sleeping, his chest rising and falling in a steady, human rhythm that I found myself monitoring with an almost obsessive intensity. Every breath he took was a victory over the vacuum; every soft, infant sigh was a defiance of the mirror.
