The village was a cluster of white ceramic shells huddling in the lee of a jagged cliff. It was a place where the air had simply stopped. As the shepherd followed Kael into the main square, he felt his four-count breath hitch. The silence here was not the heavy weight of the woods or the screaming prickle of the ash. It was a complete absence of motion.

  They stepped into the tea-house at the center of the village. The door stood open, allowing a layer of fine orange dust to coat the floorboards, yet nothing inside had been disturbed. A woman stood behind a low table. She was mid-gesture, her body tilted forward as she poured tea from a porcelain pot. The liquid was a solid, amber arc hanging in the air. It did not splash. It did not drip. It was a golden bridge made of frozen time.

  Three patrons sat at the table. One was laughing, his mouth open and his eyes crinkled. Another was reaching for a bowl. There was no smell of rot, nor the warmth of life. There was only the scent of ancient dust and cold stone.

  "Do not touch them," Kael whispered. He moved through the room with exaggerated care, his boots making no sound on the grit. "This is the Lich-Breath. When the harmony of a place breaks entirely, time piles up like silt in a dead river. They are not dead. They are simply waiting for a rhythm to return."

  "How long?" the shepherd asked. His voice sounded muffled, as if he were speaking into a thick blanket.

  "Years. Decades. Until the world moves again, or they turn to dust where they stand."

  A sudden, rhythmic clicking sound erupted from the back of the tea-house. It was the frantic, mechanical protest of gears and springs. A man emerged from behind a silk screen, wearing a heavy leather coat stuffed with brass instruments and a pair of oversized goggles pushed up onto his forehead. He was vigorously turning a hand-crank attached to a copper coil.

  "Almost had it!" the man shouted. He did not seem surprised to see two travelers in a frozen village. "A bit more torque on the secondary spindle and we might get that tea to hit the cup. Name is Barnaby. Scholar of the Hollow-Guild. Tinkerer. Professional optimist."

  Barnaby stopped cranking and wiped a smudge of grease from his cheek. He squinted at the shepherd. His eyes widened behind his lenses.

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  "Oh. Oh my," Barnaby said. He walked toward the shepherd, circling him like a suspicious animal. "You are quite the anomaly. Look at the woman. Look at the tea."

  As the shepherd stood near the frozen server, the amber arc of tea began to quiver. A single drop broke away from the solid mass and splashed into the porcelain cup with a sound that felt like a thunderclap in the silent room. The woman’s finger twitched. Her eyelid flickered.

  "Fascinating," Barnaby muttered. "Your presence acts as a bridge. You are absorbing the local friction so well that time is finding a gap to flow through. You are a walking lubricant for the world's gears."

  The scholar’s excitement was cut short by a low, scraping sound from the roof above. The vibration was jagged and hungry.

  "The crank," Kael hissed, drawing his blade. "You rang the dinner bell."

  A Resonance Scavenger dropped from the rafters. It was a lean, multi-limbed beast with skin like wet slate and eyes that pulsed with a sickly violet light. It fed on the very energy Barnaby was trying to manufacture. It ignored the scholar and lunged toward the shepherd, drawn to the massive, silent pressure behind his ribs.

  Kael moved with a soldier's instinct. He intercepted the beast, his blade ringing against its hardened hide. But the air in the tea-house began to thicken. As the scavenger thrashed, it created ripples of instability. The woman behind the counter began to fade into a gray blur, and a cold numbness started to creep up the shepherd's legs. The Lich-Breath was closing back in, threatened by the chaos of the fight.

  "Keep it steady!" Kael shouted over the screeching of the beast. "If you lose focus, we all stall!"

  The shepherd planted his feet. He ignored the flashing steel and the violet eyes of the monster. He focused entirely on the arc of amber tea. He reached for the stone in his chest and pulled. He drew the scavenger's frantic vibration and the scholar's mechanical noise into himself. He turned his body into a void of such absolute stillness that the Lich-Breath could not take hold.

  The numbness in his legs vanished. The woman remained solid. Kael’s movements stayed fluid as he drove his sword through the scavenger’s throat, pinning the creature to the floorboards.

  The beast let out one final, discordant hum and went still.

  Barnaby stood in the corner, clutching his crank to his chest. He looked at the dead scavenger, then at the shepherd, who was shaking with the effort of holding the time-void stable.

  "You really should come with me," Barnaby said, his voice unusually quiet. "A man who can make the clock tick in a dead world? The Hollow-Guild would pay a fortune just to watch you breathe."

  The shepherd did not answer. He looked at the woman behind the counter. The tea had stopped splashing. She was frozen once more, her finger caught in a permanent twitch. He had given her a second of life, and then he had taken it away to save his own.

  He turned toward the door, his heart feeling as heavy as the frozen amber.