Chapter 21: The Forge Road and the Thinning Veil

The first sign was the colour of the grass.

Not dead — not yet — but faded, as though the green had been diluted with something grey and left to dry in the sun. The change happened so gradually over the course of the morning that I did not notice it until I looked back along the trail we had covered and saw the contrast clearly: behind us, ordinary scrubland in its ordinary autumn paleness; ahead, and on all sides of the road we were now committed to, a flatness that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.

"It gets worse," Cassian said, when he saw me looking. He had dropped back to walk beside me for the first time in three days, which I noted and did not comment on.