Theon Aletheides had kept the Archive of Aletheia for many years, and nothing in it described anything like this.
The light came up through the snow.
It was crimson and gold, and it rose out of everything at once. Out of the terrace beneath his feet, and the Elsedimension it was carved into.
Out of the split Elsedimensions beyond, each one large enough to hold an Observable Existence in its valleys. Out of the burned gardens and the halls with their roofs torn away. Out of the old Immense Ones lying across the snowfields, beings who had each, at one time or another, held whole Dimensions in their palms, who now lifted their heads and stared at their own hands as the light ran up through them like water rising in a glass.
It was warm. He had expected something that strange to be cold.
He held the Archive close.
