The dust of the collapsed Angel did not settle with the natural gravity of the mountains. It hung in the air of the inner sanctum like a dense, luminous fog—a suspended suspension of microscopically fine, razor-sharp silver crystalline shards and pulverized white marble that tasted of copper and cold iron. The silence that followed the silent explosion was more total than any vacuum Lucien had ever constructed in his laboratories. It was an absolute zero of the senses.
Lucien remained on his knees in the deep snow of the observatory tier, his long black traveling cloak turning chalky white under the cascading ash. His right arm, the calcified stone talon, hung dead within its purple silk sling, heavy and unresponsive. But it was his left hand that trembled. His long, ink-stained fingers were pressed hard against his face, his palm flat over his single grey eye, trying to stem the white-hot, chemical static that was currently eating through his optic nerve.
