The ship Nox chose was the *Straywind*, Lyra's old skiff, which now sat in a museum in Portentia. It was small, fast, and, most importantly, it was a simple story. A ship of wood and wind and hope. Against the raw, conceptual chaos of the Shard, a complex warship would be a liability. A simple story was harder to unravel.
He piloted the ship himself, a single, dark speck against the immense, crystalline landscape of the Shard. The moment he passed its invisible boundary, the universe changed.
The familiar laws of physics grew soft, pliable. The space inside the Shard was a chaotic, half-formed dreamscape. Jagged mountains of raw, magical energy floated next to rivers of pure, logical data. It was the raw material of a universe, not yet hammered into a coherent shape.
And it was not empty.
