- We stayed pressed against the cavern walls, following the moonlight pouring through the crack in the ceiling. As we rounded a corner, the rays became impossibly bright, and I could see the pyre below us. It rose from the center of the cave, golden flames encircling it and licking up the pyramid of broken trees. There was a stone slab, which almost resembled some kind of Mayan altar, balancing on top of the pyre as if suspended from invisible wires. A set of weathered stone stairs let up to the altar. The snaking circle worn by Dark Casters was painted on the cave wall behind it.
Sarafine's body was lying on top of the altar, just as it had been when she had appeared in the woods. Nothing else was the same. Moonlight streamed through the roof and hit her body, radiating outward in all directions as if refracted by a prism. It was like she was holding light from the moon she was calling out of time. Even Sarafine's golden dress looked like it was stitched together from a thousand shining metallic scales.
Liv breathed. "I've never seen anything like it."
Sarafine seemed to be in some kind of trance. Her body rose a few inches above the stone, the folds of her dress cascading down like water, past the edges of the stone altar. She was amassing some serious power.
— Beautiful Darkness
