The sky cracked at dawn.

Not metaphorically. Not gradually. One moment the citizens of New Portland—the Forsaken city built in the ruins of what had been Oregon's second-largest settlement—were beginning their morning routines. The next, reality itself split open above them like a wound in creation's flesh.

Light poured through. Not sunlight. Something older, colder, absolute in its brilliance. The kind of radiance that didn't illuminate so much as annihilate shadow by its mere ...