The world was a canvas of pain. Reed’s mind felt flayed open, bleeding equations and star-charts that were not his own. Laken was curled on the sand, her body rigid, a thin, golden wisp of her very essence being drawn slowly, inexorably, toward Silas’s orbiting orrery. The silent, grey prison he had woven around them stifled their screams.

“Stop…” Reed gritted out, the words tearing from a raw throat. “You don’t… understand what you’re ...