Heat waves warped the distant horizon, baking the dark red earth into a vast iron plate.
White Snow woke from the scorching heat. The fracture in her right wing made her suck in a sharp breath. She tried moving it, and pain stabbed straight through her heart. The power of the inheritance rampaged through her veins like an untamed wild horse, each heartbeat hammering her chest numb.
"Goddamn..." she cursed, propping herself upright with her left wing.
Overhead, two crescent moons hung in the sky, one east and one west, as faint in daylight as two pale scars. The air was dry enough to set feathers alight, and every breath stole moisture from her lungs. White Snow licked her beak, the taste of rust rising from her cracked tongue.
She tried to summon spatial power. Silver runes lit up at the tips of her claws, only to go out as soon as they formed.
"Thirty percent?" She tried again, with the same result. Her teleportation range was less than a third of normal, yet the energy cost had doubled. The suppression of the Star-Locking Formation was like an invisible net, binding tight the very ability she depended on most to survive.
White Snow shook the dust from her feathers, her plump body casting a little patch of shade beneath the blazing sun. She glanced at the Storage Ring on her left claw. Its purple-gold patterns were dull and lightless, with only a trace of warmth remaining.
"Master," she muttered to the Storage Ring, "what're you doing now? Eaten yet? I'm telling you, this lousy place is hotter than the outhouse at the west end of our village."
No answer came. The Star-Locking Formation had completely severed communication between realms.
White Snow buried her beak in her wing and rubbed it,