The stones were still cold.
Alex had his palm pressed flat over them—all seven arranged in a line on the warm rock before him, the sun moving across them as the morning progressed—and they gave him nothing. No hum. No flicker. No whisper of the chord they'd made together for a year.
But every time his hand pressed against his belly instead, the small lives inside responded.
Not to the stones. To him.
He thought about that for a long time while Siddy explained, in exhaustive detail, his theory about the correct technique for catching mountain birds (which did not apply to him, Leo pointed out, because he was a four-year-old serpent who could neither fly nor had ever successfully caught a bird, a point Siddy disputed on the grounds that he had once been very close to a bird).
He thought about the shadow's words.
The threshold isn't just a door. It's a reset.
And: the stones are opposed to it. The artifacts are its enemy. Or its weakness.
