Chapter One: Borrowed Wind

Yue Lan stared. “You're wind-aligned?” “I wasn't a second ago.” A green dial appeared at the edge of his vision. 09:57. Lightning fell again. Lin recalled the precise deflection from Yue Lan's memory and raised a wall of air. The bolt glanced off the roof, but the impact tipped the car farther. In the corner, a little girl watched a glass marble roll across the floor. “It's going to fall that way,” she whispered, pointing opposite the instruments. The marble made an impossible curve. Lin understood: the child possessed a gift so faint she did not know it existed. She could sense places where space was about to tear. Lightning split the track, and a transparent fissure opened exactly where she had pointed. Lin took her hand.